‘Cute’: Danish Drama Tackling Sexual Taboos Launches Trailer Ahead of San Sebastian Premiere (Exclusive)
The Hollywood Reporter can unveil the trailer for Marlene Emilie Lyngstad’s debut feature Cute, set to premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival this week.
The Danish film, a bold confrontation of sexual taboos, fetishisation and adult attraction to children, is written by Lyngstad and Emilie Koefoed Larse. It follows a man called Richard (Jan Gunnar Røise) who is troubled by forbidden feelings for his seven-year-old stepdaughter. He decides to leave his girlfriend and retreats to his childhood home to renovate it ahead of its sale, but his self-imposed exile is disrupted by the childlike presence of his mother’s caregiver, Stella.
Richard soon discovers her double life as a Lolita camgirl, and the two develop a transgressive surrogate father-daughter relationship. Their constructed reality begins to unravel when the stepdaughter he left behind reaches out.
The Nordisk Film Production, co-producing with Film i Väst and Amarcord, co-stars Gina Jaqueline, a social media influencer and OnlyFans creator making her feature film debut. Karin Bertling, Molly Kirk Rasmussen and Kitt Maiken Mortensen also feature.
“I have accepted that I am unable to ignore the things that scare and sadden me,” said the Norwegian filmmaker Lyngstad. “This is why, through my films, I attempt to reshape apathy and melancholia into curiosity.”
“Something that especially scares me is the blurred line between romantic love and fetishisation. Cute is an attempt to examine this line,” she continues. “It is a story of two people who, more than anything, long for authentic intimacy, but who can’t avoid humiliating each other in their pursuit of it.”
Carl Osbæck Adelkild’s serves as producer, alongside co-producers Thomas Robsahm, Thomas Heinesen, Kristina Börjeson, Evelina Jacobsson and Johanna Bergenstråhle.
Cute will premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival on Sept. 20 in the New Directors section. The Spanish festival runs Sept. 18-26.
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