Gina Piersanti as Lila in It Felt Like Love (Variance Films)

General anxiety is often described as the constant fear that something tragic is about to happen. This dread underscores the entirety of Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love. A blunt and authentic rendering of adolescent sexuality, it follows Lila, a reticent teenager played by newcomer Gina Piersanti, bewildered by her own sexual desires. She’s the sidekick of her best friend, the more outgoing, sexualized Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni), and eventually becomes a third wheel in Chiara’s summer romance. Unlike virginal Lila, Chiara has been around the block considering her age, a trait Lila is eager to appropriate.

While on the beach watching Chiara and her boyfriend Patrick (Jesse Cordasco) flirting in the water, Lila sights an older boy, Sammy, played with an equal amount of sleaze and misogyny by Ronen Rubinstein. Tattooed and flaunting the reputation that he will “fuck anything,” Sammy embodies the desirable taboos so foreign to Lila. Once awakened to this attraction, Lila attempts to seduce Sammy, subjecting herself to increasingly precarious scenarios.

From the film’s opening scene, the audience is confronted by a foreboding image: Lila’s back to the camera as she faces a tempestuous ocean. (I couldn’t help but think of Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, in which the protagonist drowns herself after exploiting the pleasures of sexual liberation.) Hittman’s scenes are wrought with this kind of apprehension. The suggestions made by the characters’ actions and encounters provoke fear of the worst possible outcomes. This is largely due to Hittman’s dramatic shots and the absence of dialogue, a combination that often signals doom.

Lila occupies that in-between space of puberty, assuming the uncertain posture that marks girls fleeing from the Disney Channel who go all the way to third base. Gina Piersanti imbues Lila with a subtle dose of identity crisis. She is predominantly timid, easing into a flippant teenager only when in the company of her father, and she takes to lying, claiming to be far more sexually experienced than she actually is. Yet the purpose of these fabrications seems to burrow deeper than a yearning to be cool. It is almost as if she wants to convince herself that sex is appealing in the first place. When she goes to a gynecologist for emergency contraception, though she is still a virgin, it is as if she is still a child who fears conception through a kiss.

Lila’s advances on Sammy prove unsuccessful,and bring her startlingly close to sexual misconduct via his ever-sleazier friends. This creates an impressive stress level for the viewer, one I’d liken to watching a thriller more so than a drama.  One of the film’s strongest assets is its ability to inspire this kind of concern. When the subject matter involves a teenage girl, her budding sexuality, and a room full of ill-intentioned men, taboos arise instantly. However, Hittman handles these dilemmas with taste and fragility rather than vulgarity.

Aside from a few glitches in Gina Piersanti’s delivery, Lila’s character is believable and consistent. Hittman takes an incredibly delicate yet mundane subject and infuses it with a sort of mysticism, as if the tribulations of puberty are spiritual rites dictating the authenticity of the self. The film has a continuity about it that marks great art. Its ending references its beginning in a clean, cyclical manner, tying things up with satisfying portions of closure and ambiguity.