Nymph (2015)

Directed by: Laura Hermanides | 12 minutes | short film, drama | Actors: Alix Jana Cale, Bert Haelvoet, Katrin Lohmann, Patrick Vervueren

‘Nymphet’ is a short film that Flemish director Laura Hermanides was allowed to make as part of FollowGent, a script-to-screen project by Declan Lynch. The only condition is that there must be a link with Ghent in the scenario. ‘Nymphet’ is set in Ghent, but the short film mainly introduces us to the feelings of a twelve-year-old girl.

Dolly, played by a disarming Alix Jana Cale, is still on summer vacation. In her bedroom she receives a text message, which she reads with a mysterious smile. She goes downstairs, but she doesn’t expect any attention from her father. And her mother is too busy – with Dolly’s younger brother – to care about her. Dolly leaves for a friend, who interrogates her about the boy (“It’s a boy, isn’t it?”) whom Dolly says she met during the holidays and then gives her a kind of makeover. And behold: Tomboy Dolly has turned into a…

Well, actually Dolly is still a boyish girl, way too young to wear heels and swing her hips, but she likes the attention she gets on the way back from her beckoning men. Moments later, with her newly acquired self-confidence, she puts her feminine appeal into practice, but whether that has the desired result…?

With ‘Nymphet’, Laura Hermanides has made a beautiful but also uncomfortable film about the budding femininity of a young girl. It’s clever how she first misleads the viewer, but as soon as it is clear where the story is going, the discomfort predominates.