Marielle Heller does with teenage girls what Martin Scorsese did with gangsters. With period panache, a slick soundtrack and a stellar script, she turns a specific category of experience into a story of near-universal resonance. Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner’s semi-autobiographical novel, is a dizzyingly good debut. In addition to introducing Bel Powley, the film’s extraordinary star, the film depicts a young woman’s sexual coming-of-age like it’s never been seen before.
Wearing platform sandals and a look of irrepressible glee, Minnie (Powley) strides across the screen. She’s just had sex for the first time and nothing will be the same again. Describing the watershed event for her audio diary, 15 year-old Minnie recalls what began as innocent flirtation with her mother’s boyfriend. An aging bachelor with a laidback smile, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) is the perfect hunk of meat for a neophyte’s experimentation. They watch TV, banter at a bar and before long, they’re in his bed.
With tact and tremendous sensitivity for her young protagonist’s experience, Heller shoots the sex scenes with equal parts romance and discomfort (Powley was only 21 when they filmed). Monroe and Minnie’s relationship is objectively wrong but it transcends any clear-cut victim and predator dynamic. Comparisons to Lolita would be foolish; neither Minnie nor Monroe is taking explicit advantage of the other.
Lacking appropriate role models, Minnie isn’t just learning about sex, she’s also reconciling with an adult world that doesn’t seem all that happy. Minnie’s mother (Kristen Wiig) dispenses advice through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Having given birth to Minnie at age 16, she’s loving but preoccupied, unprepared to forgo the pleasures of youth. Monroe doesn’t have a day job and he spends most afternoons on the couch, watching cartoons and cooking up plans for a vitamin business.
Set in 1976 San Francisco, Diary gives thoughtful consideration to the era’s social and political context. Flower power is fading and punk is on the rise. While Heller focuses on Minnie’s thoughts, drives and insecurities (the film is a diary after all), Minnie’s voiceovers illuminate a larger shift in consciousness. The culture is transitioning as much as she is.
Production design by Jonah Markowitz is a delight. With its hippie clutter and wrinkled T-shirts, the settings and styles are an evocative recreation of the Haight-Ashbury scene. Peppered with music by Heart, T. Rex and the Stooges, the atmosphere is bright, even as Minnie slips into increasingly murky territory.
Minnie’s diary revolves around the erotic but her true love is drawing. In graceful and not excessively twee sequences, her sketches come alive. The animations are a nice, artistic component of Minnie’s development, which proves to be as creative as it is sexual.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a window into one woman’s questions and curiosities. Browsing at a comic bookstore, she wonders “Does everyone think about f*cking at much as I do?” After school, she stands naked in front a mirror and looks at herself with quizzical forthrightness. It’s not critical, the typical mode of reflection for Hollywood women. Rather, Minnie seems to be asking, Is this me? Is this what I look like?. Her motivation is to know, not disparage.
Actress Bel Powley carries the film with her magnetic face and earnest demeanor. Shedding the usual quirk and sarcasm that plagues smart, female characters, she gives a raw and fiercely likeable performance. Wiig’s presence is both a comic relief and a source of anxiety. Minnie’s not sure what she’ll do if her mother finds out about her affair, and neither are we. Defying predictability, Diary presents a complex mother-daughter relationship; as much as she loves her mother, they’re not the confidantes they used to be.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl isn’t perfect. The film is long and some of Minnie’s sentiments are trite. But diaries, those repositories of adolescent confession, always are. Heller is committed to brutal honesty and the result is far from any prepackaged morality tale. Heller and her collaborators show how women can and do enjoy sex, and how they use it to discover a new form of self-worth. I can’t wait to see what Heller does next.