Watch the trailer for How to Talk to Girls at Parties

It’s been eight long years since John Cameron Mitchell’s last movie. That film was Rabbit Hole, which starred Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a couple unmoored after the death of their young son, and introduced Miles Teller as the guilt-ridden teenage driver who caused the boy’s death. It was a quiet but devastating movie and marked an impressive detour in style and tone for the director, who’s best known for his more rambunctious comedies Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Fans of those earlier works will be delighted that Mitchell is back in flamboyant mode with his long-awaited new feature How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Based on a Neil Gaiman short story, the action takes place in Croydon in 1977 and concerns the romance that blossoms between maladroit punk Enn (newcomer Alex Sharp) and Zan (Elle Fanning), the strange girl he meets at a house party who turns out to be from much further afield than her American accent suggests.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties also reunites Mitchell with Rabbit Hole star Kidman, who looks from the trailer to give a wild performance as a punk guru who’s part Toyah Willcox, part Vivienne Westwood. Take a look at the trailer in the player above or on Youtube.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is released 11 May by StudioCanal