Summary
A pastoral tapestry of precocious longing, Little Miss Grown-Up navigates the jagged boundary between childhood whimsy and the suffocating rigidity of early 20th-century social mores. Nan Griffing, a child of the soil, finds an unlikely mirror in Simple Simon Magee—an adult whose cognitive architecture remains locked in a state of perpetual infancy. Their shared existence is disrupted when Nan unearths a sequined relic of her mother’s theatrical past, igniting a brief, scandalous flirtation with the rhythmic arts that draws the ire of a sanctimonious local clergy. This friction propels the narrative into the urban labyrinth of the city, where Nan’s burgeoning ego misinterprets the kindness of a gentleman, Morgan Thornton, for romantic destiny. The ensuing collision of rural sincerity and urban artifice forces a retreat to the farm, cementing the film as a poignant meditation on the impossibility of accelerating maturity without sacrificing the soul.
Synopsis
Little Nan Griffing whiles away the hours on her parents' farm with Simple Simon Magee, an adult with the mind of a child. While rummaging through the attic one day, Nan discovers a costume that was worn by her mother Ethel when she was on the stage and begs to be taught to dance. Ethel complies, but the lessons are soon interrupted by several horrified members of the local church society. Next, Nan, accompanied by Simple Simon, visits her grandmother Anna and Aunt Grace in the city. Hidden in the orchard, Simon frightens the servants, who mistake him for a ghost. Nan becomes infatuated with Grace's fiancé, Morgan Thornton, and proposes, but when she steals away to his house intending to elope, Morgan summons her aunt and grandmother. Nan demands that he choose between her and Grace, and when he picks the latter, she decides to forsake city life and return to her parents.
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