Feminism, Freudian Slips, and A Fledgling Named ‘Flavia’

Nestled in a fully-packed theatre at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, I watched the U.S. premiere of Flavia, a film following Alan Bradley’s beloved mystery novels about an 11-year-old chemist and sleuthing savant living in the English countryside.

The first book in the series — The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie — serves as the foundation for the film adaptation.

After a dead body is discovered on the family’s property, Flavia de Luce — the youngest of three daughters — sets out to prove her father’s innocence after he is accused of murder. Equal parts humor, brilliance, humanity and intrigue, the film somehow balances cozy nostalgia with sharp wit.

I had the opportunity to watch the family-friendly mystery during the 43rd Annual Miami Film Festival, and it felt unlike anything else in the festival lineup. Most festival films aim to provoke — to unsettle, challenge or push boundaries. Flavia does something quieter.

It feels safe. Warm.

A bit like returning home.

But beneath the film’s softness is a surprisingly sharp defiance. Flavia is constantly underestimated by the adults around her — dismissed because of her age, her curiosity, her tendency to ask the right questions at exactly the wrong time. And yet, she refuses to shrink herself to make anyone comfortable.

She challenges authority figures with a confidence that feels almost startling coming from an 11-year-old. Detectives, family members, suspects — everyone believes they already understand the world better than she does. 

Flavia simply refuses to accept that as fact.

Instead, she pokes holes in assumptions. Pushes against certainty. Forces adults to reconsider what they think they know.

And the film never treats that curiosity as arrogance. It treats it as courage.

Following the screening, producers Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan joined a Q&A discussing the years-long process of bringing Bradley’s books to the screen. The pair explained that the rights had once belonged to a major director who never ultimately made the film before the project eventually returned to them.

From there, the mission became clear: preserve the voice that made the novels so beloved in the first place.

“The books have this incredible voice to them,” the filmmakers explained during the discussion, emphasizing that the goal was capturing the soul of Bradley’s writing rather than simply recreating the mystery itself.

That same care extended into casting the film’s young lead. According to the producers, the role was unexpectedly recast late in development after another actress accepted a television project, forcing the team to review hundreds of auditions in a short amount of time.

But the moment they found their Flavia, they knew.

“She walked out of the room and we all looked at each other,” Kaplan recalled. “We had the movie.”

The result is a protagonist who feels impossibly rare in modern family films: deeply intelligent without losing her childhood wonder. Curious without becoming cynical. Brilliant without needing to announce it every five minutes.

“There are very few characters like this,” Mazur said.

In an era where intelligence in young female characters is often softened, exaggerated or reduced to a gimmick, Flavia simply exists as she is: observant, difficult, funny and unapologetically brilliant.

She’s stubborn. Unsettlingly perceptive. A child who refuses to sit quietly when the adults are wrong.

Somewhere along the way, audiences stopped being given girls like this — girls allowed to be strange, intellectual and fearless without the story punishing them for it.

That’s what makes her feel so refreshing. The film never asks Flavia to make herself smaller to protect the egos around her.

“[We] wanted someone kids could look up to,” Mazur added, beaming brightly toward the crowd.

It seems they did their job a bit too well.

Because as the audience erupted into raucous cheers and applause, it was clear that a room full of adults wanted to be her, too.

Funny how that works.