Hausner’s bleak feature debut can be difficult to watch, adopting lo-fi aesthetics and conspicuously fast zoom-ins, as an outcast teenage girl tries to cope with the problems of family and school by seducing an older man and a younger boy.

---

---

Jessica Hausner, who recently made polarising films such as Little Joe (2019) and Club Zero (2023), produced her first feature back in 2001 with Lovely Rita.  In case you are wondering, there’s no association with the song of the same name by The Beatles. 

The film centres on Rita, an Austrian teenage girl who is an outcast at school, occasionally bullied and given inconsequential roles in school plays.  When she’s back home, she faces the wrath of her parents who nevertheless still dote on her. 

Constantly navigating insults and punishments, it’s a torrid experience being Rita, who’s played by Barbara Osita in her only acting role.  Her face is a blank, seemingly accepting her fate, but she can only tolerate so much. 

It is a bleak film and goes into rather dark territory in the latter half, but Hausner keeps it sufficiently gritty with lo-fi aesthetics.  Part of the ‘amateur-ish’ cinematography comes in the form of conspicuously fast zoom-ins, which Hausner employs perhaps way too distractingly. 

“It can’t be so hard to go to the toilet and put the lid down.”

Because of its serious tone, it is hard to tell whether Lovely Rita is meant to be satirical as a homage to ham-fisted television soaps of the ‘80s and ‘90s. 

In any case, one might mark it as a coming-of-age work as it deals with one girl’s discovery of sexuality as a coping mechanism.  A recurring subplot sees Rita trying to seduce an older man (her school bus driver) and a younger boy. 

Her newfound agency, one at odds with social norms, will set her on a collision course that she may never recover from.  Lovely Rita can be a difficult watch because of its content and monotonous style, so this is only for those curious about Hausner’s first feature.

Grade: C+

---

Trailer:

Music: