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)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

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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Inglourious Basterds (2009)
(SPOILERS) His staunchest fans would doubtless claim Tarantino has never taken a wrong step, but for me, his post-Pulp Fiction output had been either not quite as satisfying (Jackie Brown), empty spectacle (the Kill Bills) or wretched (Death Proof). It wasn’t until Inglourious Basterds that he recovered his mojo, revelling in an alternate World War II where Adolf didn’t just lose but also got machine gunned to death in a movie theatre showing a warmly received Goebbels-produced propaganda film. It may not be his masterpiece – as Aldo Raines refers to the swastika engraved on “Jew hunter” Hans Landa’s forehead, and as Tarantino actually saw the potential of his script – but it’s brimming with ideas and energy.

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Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

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Four Rooms (1995)
(SPOILERS) I had an idea that I’d only seen part of Four Rooms previously, and having now definitively watched the entire thing, I can see where that notion sprang from. It’s a picture that actively encourages you to think it never existed. Much of it isn’t even actively terrible – although, at the same time, it couldn’t be labelled remotely good– but it’s so utterly lethargic, so lacking in the energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness that characterises these filmmakers at their best – and yes, I’m including Rodriguez, although it’s a very limited corner for him – that it’s very easy to banish the entire misbegotten enterprise from your mind.

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Pulp Fiction (1994)
(SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump. And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

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Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

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The Witch (2015)
(SPOILERS) I’m not the biggest of horror buffs, so Stephen King commenting that The Witch “scared the hell out of me” might have given me pause for what was in store. Fortunately, he’s the same author extraordinaire who referred to Crimson Peak as “just fucking terrifying” (it isn’t). That, and that general reactions to Robert Eggers’ film have fluctuated across the scale, from the King-type response on one end of the spectrum to accounts of unrelieved boredom on the other. The latter response may also contextualise the former, depending on just what King is referring to, because what’s scary about The Witch isn’t, for the most part, scary in the classically understood horror sense. It’s scary in the way The Wicker Man is scary, existentially gnawing away at one through judicious martialling of atmosphere, setting and theme.

Indeed, this is far more impressive a work than Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, which had hitherto been compared to The Wicker Man, succeeding admirably …

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Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
I had no avid desire to see Sam Taylor Johnson’s adaptation of E L Gray’s novel, but I was curious about it – in the same way I am any big hit such as a Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There’s no point pretending to have an opinion on something you haven’t seen. I haven’t read the novel, nor likely will I, but more power to Gray for getting her Twilight fanfic repurposed as erotic fiction; seriously, I don’t get the naysaying there (her prose may be a different matter, but as I say, I haven’t read it). Fifty Shades of Grey the movie? Well, its handsomely made, but it’s exceptionally dull.

I don’t think I’m probably that different to Fifty Shades devotees on that score; it seems to have been greeted generally with an “It was okay, but…” from those I know who have read the novels. My impression generally was of a wish-fulfilment fantasy a la Pretty Woman but with added (very coy) S&M. Well-performed with lip biting zeal by Dakota Johnson (appea…

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