Miller’s Girl is a 2024 movie on Netflix that stars Jenna Ortega and takes viewers through the unprofessional relationship of Ortega’s character, Cairo Sweet, and her teacher, Jonathan Miller. This movie takes such a nuanced topic and makes it seem black and white– in all the wrong ways. It takes the idea of teacher-student relationships and spins it to be all about sex, and all the student’s fault. It is a dangerous telling of the topic that could give viewers harmful ideas about who is at fault in such a complex situation.
When I first decided to watch this movie, I was enticed by the fact that Jenna Ortega was a leading actress, and I was interested to see how this movie and Ortega would portray the topic of teacher-student relationships. I was quickly taken aback by the movie’s weird sexual nature that felt completely out of place.
One of the first scenes in the movie shows Cairo walking into class early with a stack of books. Cairo and Mr. Miller are alone in the classroom, chatting about books and class assignments. Cairo leaves the room and leaves her books behind, and another teacher, Boris Fillmore, comes in to see Miller looking at a book in Cairo’s stack. Fillmore guesses that the student reading the book is a girl, because “Boys are too lazy to read porn.” Miller asks how the book is porn, and Fillmore proceeds to read an explicit passage. Right off the bat, sexual topics get brought up in a classroom, and because of a student’s books no less.
Continuing on with their unprofessionalism, Miller and Fillmore are sitting together the next day before school. They’re talking and smoking a cigarette when Cairo walks out of the woods. We can see Miller tensing up, deciding whether or not to look at her. She walks up to them and says “hello,” almost immediately getting told a story about the two teachers being drunk at Miller’s bachelor party. This kind of story in between drags of a cigarette doesn’t seem like something teachers tell a student that they just met.
Cairo’s best friend Winnie is another overly-sexual and problematic character. Fillmore walks by her locker where she drops her books, but Fillmore doesn’t give her the time of day. It’s only after Winnie says that she dressed up for him that he plays along. She says she wants to get into his physics class, insinuating that she wants to spend more time with him. He leaves Winnie with some hope when Cairo goes up to her. Winnie says that she’s “seducing Coach Fillmore.”
After this, we see Cairo and Winnie later that day in Winnie’s room doing some homework. Cairo is mulling over her Yale admissions-essay, not sure what her greatest achievement is. Winnie, eating a blue sucker that stains her mouth for the duration of the scene, tells Cairo that she should “experience something,” then saying that Cairo should “write a treatise on teacher-student affairs.” I should note that she doesn’t say “relationships,” but instead “affairs.” This is a simple detail that shows how sexual everything in this movie is. It isn’t about a relationship with emotional connection or manipulation, it’s just sexual. Winnie continues this abhorrent conversation by saying she hasn’t decided yet if she is going to have a sexual relationship with Fillmore, explaining that she doesn’t see an issue with age-gaps. She goes into a deeply detailed account of how an older man would make her first sexual experience better than if it was with a boy her own age. She then brings up Mr. Miller, insinuating that he has a thing for Cairo.
This conversation spurs the idea of a relationship between Cairo and her teacher. This honestly disgusted me when I first watched it. It begins the narrative littered throughout the movie that this simply sexual relationship is Cairo and Winnie’s fault; inherently saying that teacher-student relationships are primarily sexual, and at fault of the underage student.
The movie continues with Cairo’s thoughts as she thinks about this potential relationship. She says, “Feels like I’m not right,” and “I want your attention,” again conveying that Cairo is the one to start the relationship, even if she knows it isn’t right. Miller asks Cairo to see him after school, where they get to know each other a little better through a conversation about Cairo’s essay. Miller playfully says, “How old are you?” after Cairo name-drops an old band. Cairo says, “If you can’t tell, then I won’t,” again portraying Cairo as the instigator of some underlying tension. Miller starts to contribute to this when he gives Cairo “special treatment” by allowing her to start the midterm early.
The next scene shows Miller, his wife Beatrice, and Fillmore at a bar where Winnie conveniently works. She seems to flirt with Fillmore a bit, spurring conversation about students, and of course, Cairo. As soon as Miller even mentions her name, Bea asks, “Is she pretty?” like that is the only thing that matters to the teacher. Miller dodges the question by saying Cairo is talented.
Miller and Cairo’s relationship continues at a poetry reading that Miller suggested she go to. She does, very dressed up, thinking to herself that she’s not here for the poetry. She waits for Miller to arrive, and when he does, they sit together, inching closer together as the intimate readings begin. After the event, Miller and Cairo are standing outside together as Cairo pulls out a cigarette that Miller helps her light. She shares it with Miller, and he willingly takes it. It doesn’t stop there, as the next time they see each other before school, Miller offers her one, encouraging the young girl’s bad habits. This all seems completely unbelievable to me. No teacher would so quickly meet a student somewhere outside of class, then share cigarettes with her, regardless of intention. It should go deeper, there should be more subtle complexities that muddle the situation. At this point, there doesn’t even seem to be much emotional connection at all.
After Cairo leaves her phone in Miller’s bag after class, he stops by her house to drop it off. The gate is open, and she comes out of her house wearing a skin-tight dress, telling him to “come here.” It seems like Cairo is the one to set this up and convince him to continue this relationship. They end up kissing in a perfect, rainy, dreamlike scenario, as if there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing, and that Cairo wants it to happen. It is unbelievable, yet again, that this would happen with (only) sexual undertones that the young student initiates. It disgusts me, yet again, that the movie is portraying such a complex, manipulative situation as something simple and without emotional contortion.
Soon after, Cairo sends a copy of her midterm to Miller, addressed to him, “love, Cairo.” Earlier in the movie, it was set up that the midterm assignment is to write in the voice of a specific author. She chooses Henry Miller, the author of the book Fillmore called porn. Miller gave it the okay, and now sits down to read the finished product. It is a horribly graphic recounting of a teacher-student relationship that Miller ends up pleasuring himself to. Again, the only word I can use for my reaction to this is: disgusted.
It gets worse as he seems to flip, telling Cairo that her midterm was inappropriate. He says that he doesn’t understand, and that it is pornography, to which she agrees. Miller says that he “cannot indulge this,” to the midterm and to their relationship. Cairo says that he already has, that he inspired the essay. He seems to deny everything, saying that she has always just been his student. We finally get a touch of emotional manipulation here, as after he says that, he almost leans in for another kiss. Cairo goes on to give a shattering speech that seems to come from her breaking heart. She attacks Miller’s writing and his character, leaving him the victim in a situation he let happen.
The fact that there is even an ounce of the teacher, the authority figure, being the victim is insane to me. This movie came out in 2024, but it feels like something an insecure man in the ‘60s came up with. Throughout the whole movie, Cairo is portrayed as the evil mastermind who takes advantage of a teacher, when in reality, the situation would be manipulated and grown by the teacher using his power to manipulate the young student.
This idea continues and gets worse as Cairo begins to plot her revenge. She wants to take Miller down, exposing their relationship and ruining his career. As this is happening, Miller is telling an inaccurate story to his wife who seems to see right through it. But she doesn’t care. In fact, she uses it as some twisted foreplay for them, continuing the movie’s insane sexual nature. Furthermore, Fillmore stops by Miller and Bea’s house, texting Winnie while she is with Cairo. The girls end up sending a photo of them two kissing, to which Fillmore later says that he deleted it, because he knows where the line is and doesn’t cross it. In other words, he can look at the picture and encourage things, but he doesn’t go far enough to get himself in trouble.
As Cairo’s revenge unfolds with her submission of the graphic midterm to the Vice Principal, Miller stumbles through a conversation with his wife, saying that he could lose his job if Cairo “convinces” the principal that anything happened between them. Beatrice says that “teenage girls are dangerous… full of emotional violence,” again insinuating that everything that happened is teenage, emotional Cairo’s fault.
Cairo doesn’t come to school the next day, and Winnie is beside herself, like something horrible happened to her. Cairo sits down with the Vice Principal and explains everything, telling a story of the emotional manipulation that the movie lacked the entire time. Mr. Miller also sits down with the Vice Principal, not doing himself any favors, stumbling again through his words and acting shifty, like he finally understands he could be caught. This whole scene makes it look like Cairo has set Mr. Miller up for failure. She was the one to manipulate him and is now ratting him out. As far as the plot and narrative of the movie goes, it makes sense. But it is just so unbelievable and misconstrued. Teacher-student relationships don’t happen like this, but this movie makes it seem like they all do, like the teachers are the victims and get played by “dangerous” teenagers filled with “emotional violence.” Miller even says to the Vice Principal that he’s “getting the impression that there’s nothing I can say to defend my position here.” The movie then cuts to a sad picture of Miller sitting outside, talking to Fillmore and saying, “It’s not about my feelings. It’s about what she implies.” Fillmore magically decides to reprimand Miller’s decisions, even though he has been partaking in the same issue with Winnie. This, along with similar reprimands by Beatrice, feels to me like the movie’s scapegoat; their way of saying that the movie isn’t all bad, and doesn’t totally condone the insane things they’ve been portraying the whole time. These characters watched Miller’s behavior unfold and didn’t have anything to say until after the shoe dropped.
The movie goes so far as to send its most sexual character, Winnie, to the rescue of Mr. Miller as she tells Cairo not to out him. She says, “You’re gonna ruin his life,” as if she didn’t want to do the same thing with Fillmore. It’s completely out of character. Winnie encouraged it the whole time, and is now deciding it’s wrong, saying “This is not what I meant” after Cairo says, “You knew what we were doing.” The movie continues its narrative that everything is Cairo’s fault as she circles back to the Yale admissions-essay prompt. It portrays that everything was elaborately set up and executed for Cairo’s writing. The movie finally ends with Cairo reading her essay, seeing Mr. Miller on the courthouse steps, and smirking as she gets ready to defeat him.
Miller’s Girl is a twisted, disgusting telling of teacher-student relationships. It never ceases to portray Cairo Sweet as the villain who manipulated her teacher into giving her an experience for a college essay. It proudly conveys the message that Mr. Miller is a victim who blindly followed a young girl into a trap. Although Jenna Ortega is an incredible actress, she was given an unfortunate character in an unfortunate movie. Whether or not the filmmakers intended to push such a harmful narrative, I can’t help but be scared for people forming opinions on this complex situation that stumble upon this movie. It is disgusting how they paint teenage girls to be manipulative masterminds, when in reality, they are the victims falling into the hands of authority figures.
After writing this article, I will never watch this movie again, and I will be sure to continue to form my opinions from real situations told by credible sources, not fictional depictions of complex, nuanced situations, especially when they involve underage individuals. Reader and viewer, I urgently encourage you to do the same.