Marlene Emilie Lyngstad has ruffled some feathers at San Sebastián with her feature debut “Cute.”

“I find it interesting and exciting that the film creates such strong reactions,” she tells Variety.

“It’s never explicit, so the discomfort must arise from the inner battles of the characters. Maybe people are confronted by their own monsters?”

Her lead, Richard, is certainly used to dealing with his own inner demons. Attracted to his girlfriend’s seven-year-old daughter, he leaves and hides in his old childhood home. There, he meets his mother’s caregiver, Stella, who likes to behave like a little girl. Also in front of the camera.

“I think there’s an important distinction between the guilt of someone who has abused a child and the guilt of someone with an unwanted attraction who’s determined not to act on it. My film deals with the latter,” emphasizes Lyngstad.

“Richard is fighting an inner battle that confronts us with difficult but important questions: How can this person forge a decent life while carrying shame that can never be eliminated? Is this person also worthy of love?”

“Cute” is a love story, she says.

“It asks what love is. It’s about two adults, each broken in their own way, who long to be loved unconditionally.”

While the media tends to feed people black-and-white narratives, people watch cinema “because they want more than that.”

“I’m not interested in discomfort for its own sake, but I do think that some degree of unsettlement is inevitable when asking questions that might not have answers. I find humans uncomfortably contradictory, and I love it when cinema exposes these contradictions.”

TrustNordisk handles sales for “Cute,” produced by Nordisk Film Production A/S (Denmark). It’s co-produced by Nordisk Film Production Ab, Film I Väst (Sweden) and Amarcord (Norway).

Jan Gunnar Røise, who worked on her graduation film “Norwegian Offspring,” Karin Bertling, Kitt Maiken Mortensen and Molly Kirk Rasmussen star in the film. As well as newcomer Gina Jaqueline, who plays Stella.

“I first met Gina while doing research for this film. She was a collector of the ‘cute’ aesthetic, and I was interested in understanding its appeal on grown-ups. When I told her about Stella, she opened up about her experience with OnlyFans and the online erotic market,” recalls Lyngstad.

She asked Jaqueline to join as a consultant when developing the script.

“She knew this universe firsthand. When we started the casting process, I decided to invite Gina, even though she had no formal acting training. She turned out to be a raw talent. She had the ability to lift the scenes from the page and deliver performances beyond my imagination.”

“She was navigating the line between being exceptionally charming, vital, very vulnerable and haunted. I was very touched by her presence.”

Lyngstad found the contrast between Røise and Jaqueline “especially exciting”: “It was Jan Gunnar’s precision and control against Gina’s playfulness and intuition,” she says.

As proven by their first responses following the world premiere, cinema audiences have a complicated relationship with sexual imagery these days, even though anything is available online.

“It’s hypocritical,” says the director.

“That’s why I wanted to deal with the imagery provided by the internet. Images connecting childhood and sexuality are a part of pop culture and even mainstream pornography. A new territory of moral ambiguity has emerged. How should we navigate these blurred lines between fantasy, representation and exploitation?”

She adds: “I think we don’t want to look at this. Maybe it’s because we all carry some kind of guilty conscience?”