The whole sex thing is annoying, isn’t it? Deftly weaving in issues of political correctness, of sexual awakening, of the aching burden of innocence and the strange loss we feel when we finally get rid of it, She Monkeys certainly covers a lot of ground in its slender 75 minute frame. The fact that basically every shot is moist and slippery with symbolism helps, also. Note to self – don’t push girls off diving boards if THEY ARE NOT READY TO JUMP OFF DIVING BOARDS. She’s not ready, and that’s OK. Get me? Pervert.

Quiet teen Emma doesn’t seem to mind keeping herself to herself. Though it’s clear to her seven year old sister that physically she is no longer a kid, she’s far more interested in voltige – a hypnotising form of acrobatics that sees lithe young girls balance on the back of a cantering horse – than in exploring her blossoming skin stuff. But it’s whilst training that she meets Cassandra, a slightly older local girl who takes a shine to the unassuming and tight-lipped Emma, and together they embark on the kind of urgent, slightly confusing friendship you often see just before the good bits in juicy top-shelf fare. But though Cassandra is keen to throw her lot in with the whole reckless jealousy, dancing in the moonlight, tossing-heads-back-in-laughter type romance, it’s pretty clear that Emma is more bemused by these developments than excited; her various brushes with brief sexual encounters leaving her blank-eyed and almost resentful. After all, she seems to reason wearily, is getting all sexy the same as growing up?

Admittedly, it’s not the most original premise in the world, and with meaningful silences across a hay bale, lots of close-ups of stretching and clunking symbolism a-go-go it would be easy to get a little impatient with She Monkeys. But a secondary narrative strand – that of Emma’s younger sister and her own urgency to embrace her sexuality – offers something far more absorbing, and it’s within this complementary plot that She Monkeys really comes to life. Being first alerted to the idea that she is a girl rather than simply a child after being reprimanded for not wearing a bikini top at a local swimming pool, seven year old Sara (a just astonishingly good Isabella Lindquist) soon becomes determined to speed up her own sexual awakening by insisting on a lurid leopard print bikini, drawing on achingly ramshackle kitten whiskers on her cheeks and living for hugs with the object of her desire – her teenage cousin Sebastian.

The contrast between Emma’s irritation at her imminent womanhood and Sara’s unbearably innocent assurance that she is “in love” is genuinely interesting, providing moments of excruciating dark comedy as Sara attempts to woo her would-be lover despite her father’s gentle attempts to inform her that “Sebastian doesn’t feel the way you do about him”. The scenes of desperate, hopeless seduction (one moment in particular will draw inevitable comparisons to the likes of Little Miss Sunshine) are strikingly difficult to watch, but serve to offer up intriguing questions – at what age is it ‘correct’ to feel sexual inclinations? Is it healthier for Sara to carelessly indulge these obviously harmless feelings, or to be informed that they are wrong, sinful and foolish – and in doing so risk losing her innocence completely? Aschan’s loose grip on the dialogue and scant plotting means that these issues are never really tackled head-on, but the fact that they’re thrown up at all makes for gripping enough drama.

There are moments of real genius in She Monkeys, it’s just that they’re a little buried beneath a few layers of stuff we’ve seen a million times before. Get this Aschan lass a few films under her belt, a more confident grasp on scripting and less of a reliance on clunking symbols, and she’ll be flying. See, growing up doesn’t have to be dreadful.