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.