​FILMS

the diary of a teenage girl

2015 review number 79:

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: (Comedy/Drama): 80 out of 100: Teen angst is a theme that should be familiar to all adults. Your teenage years are a period of exploring and discovering yourself. Some teenagers endure more arduous and challenging times than others. One such teenager who experiences a gamut of emotions is 15 year old Minnie.

 

Minnie (Bel Powley) lives with her sister and mother, Charlotte (Kristen Wiig). Charlotte's boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) regularly comes over and it's he who ignites Minnie's sexual desires. She orally records her innermost thoughts as a form of diary. She also seems to be living in a dream world at times when her drawings come to life in animation sequences that illustrate how she is feeling. 

 

Hollywood continues its tradition of featuring a 20 something year old playing a teenager. There's a damned good reason though why an underage performer could not play the part of Minnie. 23 year old English actress Bel Powley is the protagonist and it's a brave performance considering all the nudity and sex scenes. Provocative, evocative and sexually active...that's our heroine of the piece. This is a star in the making performance. She was recently seen as Princess Margaret in A Royal Night Out and she just about stole the show in that. Here, she is the show. She takes you along with her on a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

 

Alexander Skarsgård is brilliant as Monroe. He is developing into a fine character actor, just like his father Stellan. Even though you might think it's despicable that he is drawn to a 15 year old girl, Skarsgård's nuanced performance shows that his character is more than just a dirty, old man. Kristen Wiig also demonstrates her dramatic acting chops. She's come a long way since her time on "Saturday Night Live" and shows that she can do drama just as well as she does comedy.

 

San Francisco in the 1970s comes to life and it's a credit to the production design team. The free-spirited, sexually-free era is perfectly recreated here. The soundtrack also complements the setting. The songs are not what you would call popular, which is a good thing as sometimes a well-known song can distract the viewer from what is happening on the screen.

 

There is a fine balance between drama and comedy. It's easy to empathise with the characters when the characterisations and story have been fully fleshed out. The screenplay with some witty lines and character exchanges, is also a standout feature.

 

Some scenes will shock due to their gratuitous nature. There will be people out there who will be offended. Stay away if you find oral sex, lesbian sex scenes, drug taking by minors and underage sex confronting. Perhaps there were some scenes that dragged on featuring these acts. They were necessary to include but unnecessary to prolong.

 

"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is an indie production that should even appeal to the mainstream. It is a fine directorial debut by Marielle Heller who we should hear from more in the years to come. Unfortunately, given its themes, the young teenage audience will be restricted from seeing it but all of us adults can relive some of the pain and ecstasy that we experienced when we were teenagers.

 

Starring Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård and Kristen Wiig

(102 minutes)

Parental advice: Sex scenes, nudity, sexual references, adult themes, coarse language and drug use.

Addtional scene during or after credits: Yes, during the credits Minnie and her sister are dancing and playing on the beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9LNsSjnqBM (Movie trailer)

 

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