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 confronts sexual taboos, fetishisation, and adult attraction to children. Written by Lyngstad and Emilie Koefoed Larse, it follows Richard (Jan Gunnar Røise), a man grappling with forbidden feelings toward his seven-year-old stepdaughter. He leaves his girlfriend and retreats to his childhood home to prepare it for sale, but his self-imposed exile is disrupted by the childlike presence of his mother’s caregiver, Stella.
Richard soon uncovers her double life as a Lolita camgirl, and the two form a transgressive surrogate father-daughter relationship. Their constructed reality begins to fracture when the stepdaughter he left behind makes contact.
The Nordisk Film Production, co-produced with Film i Väst and Amarcord, also stars Gina Jaqueline, a social media influencer and OnlyFans creator making her feature film debut. Karin Bertling, Molly Kirk Rasmussen, and Kitt Maiken Mortensen round out the cast.
“I have accepted that I am unable to ignore the things that scare and sadden me,” said Norwegian filmmaker Lyngstad. “This is why, through my films, I attempt to reshape apathy and melancholia into curiosity.”
“Something that especially concerns me is the blurred line between romantic love and fetishisation. Cute is an attempt to examine this boundary,” she continues. “It is a story of two people who, more than anything, long for authentic intimacy but who cannot avoid humiliating each other in their pursuit of it.”
Carl Osbæck Adelkild 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 September 20 in the New Directors section. The Spanish festival runs September 18–26.
