Alienation is good for your art.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

(2015)

(SPOILERS) Not so much flirting with controversial material as belly flopping into it, actress Marielle Heller’s writer-directorial debut adapts Phoebe Gloeckner’s 2002 graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures with winning flair for the visual flourishes of its source material, its protagonist given to flights of fantasy and doodlings come alive. It comes as little surprise then, that Robert Crumb was an inspiration to Gloeckner; there’s a similarly libidinous grotesquery in protagonist Minnie’s style and obsessions. At times, one can’t help but recall Terry Zwigoff’s doc Crumb and the animated parts of American Splendor.

Set in San Francisco, 1976, Diary follows 15-year-old Minnie (English actress Bel Powley) on a journey of sexual discovery, as she is deflowered by her mother’s boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) and proceeds to grow in confidence and abandon, despite being a bit of a geek at heart. Heller’s depicts a San Francisco of generally debauched licentiousness, a fecund setting for such rites of passage, and with a mother (Kristen Wiig) permanently out of it on something, and a stepfather-come-shrink (Christopher Meloni) mostly out of the picture, Minnie is pretty much unimpeded in her experimentation, for better or worse.

Teen angst bullshit can be a bit of chore to sit through, but when it’s infused with such wry observation, visual verve and idiosyncrasy as it is here, it’s frequently a delight (Diary isn’t a comedy, though, however much the larger-than-life elements and poster design may give that impression). Powley (in her 20s, lest anyone be concerned, which given Hollywood’s track record would be entirely reasonable) is marvellously dour as the febrile, heavy-lidded teen with a head full of noise, lust and longing, while Skarsgård is entirely unapologetic as the lustful lust object.

His morally culpable exploiter of teen flesh, surfing the frisson of a free-love licence in the period of Polanski’s proclivities, is perhaps the picture’s biggest risk, since Heller is uninterested in assigning standard-issue judgement calls, confident the audience can make their own minds up. Wiig is strong, but proffered something of a short straw in an underseen and used role (albeit at least partly required by the plot), while Abby Wait scores big with every line reading as a younger sister who manages to make Minnie look the height of cool.

It isn’t all note-perfect; an acid trip scene is unable to offer more than the heights of cliché, as Monroe has a bad one, and sometimes the succession of encounters feels like Minnie, or Heller, or Gloeckner, is ticking off a checklist. So too, the ending is disappointingly staid, embracing the learn-and-grow nature of the teen genre.

But mostly The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a fresh, vibrant movie, one that deserves to sit alongside the most astute charterings of the treacherous waters of teendom. Whatever Heller does next, and Powley for that matter, ought to be well worth a look. The UK 18 certificate seems as absurd as it did for Heathers back in the day, since it excludes the age group who would respond to it most (well, not really – when did a certificate ever do that? – but nominally so). This may be uncompromising, but it isn’t an especially explicit film, except perhaps in the censor’s fetid imagination; what probably most unnerved them is Diary’s reticence in terms of blame and consequence, thus failing to offer acceptably moralistic resolutions.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
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I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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The Verdict (1982)
(SPOILERS) Sidney Lumet’s return to the legal arena, with results every bit as compelling as 12 Angry Men a quarter of a century earlier. This time the focus is on the lawyer, in the form of Paul Newman’s washed-up ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, given a case that finally matters to him. In less capable hands, The Verdict could easily have resorted to a punch-the-air piece of Hollywood cheese, but, thanks to Lumet’s earthy instincts and a sharp, unsentimental screenplay from David Mamet, this redemption tale is one of the genre’s very best.

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(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

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Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
(SPOILERS) The belated arrival of the Ant-Man sequel on UK shores may have been legitimately down to World Cup programming, but it nevertheless adds to the sense that this is the inessential little sibling of the MCU, not really expected to challenge the grosses of a Doctor Strange, let alone the gargantuan takes of its two predecessors this year. Empire magazine ran with this diminution, expressing disappointment that it was "comparatively minor and light-hitting" and "lacks the scale and ambition of recent Marvel entries". Far from deficits, for my money these should be regard as accolades bestowed upon Ant-Man and the Wasp; it understands exactly the zone its operating in, yielding greater dividends than the three most recent prior Marvel entries the review cites in its efforts at point scoring.

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The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
(SPOILERS) I suspect, if I hadn’t been ignorant of the story of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee selling secrets to the Soviets during the ‘70s, I’d have found The Falcon and the Snowman less engaging than I did. Which is to say that John Schlesinger’s film has all the right ingredients to be riveting, including a particularly camera-hogging performance from Sean Penn (as Lee), but it’s curiously lacking in narrative drive. Only fitfully does it channel the motives of its protagonists and their ensuing paranoia. As such, the movie makes a decent primer on the case, but I ended up wondering if it might not be ideal fodder for retelling as a miniseries.

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
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I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
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Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War, Infinity Wars I & II, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions (Iron Man II), but there are points in Age of Ultron where it becomes distractingly so. …

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Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
(SPOILERS) The latest instalment of the impossibly consistent in quality Mission: Impossible franchise has been hailed as the best yet, and with but a single dud among the sextet that’s a considerable accolade. I’m not sure it's entirely deserved – there’s a particular repeated thematic blunder designed to add some weight in a "hero's validation" sense that not only falls flat, but also actively detracts from the whole – but as a piece of action filmmaking, returning director Christopher McQuarrie has done it again. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is an incredible accomplishment, the best of its ilk this side of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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