Michael C. here with a fresh dispatch from Park City.
With coming-of-age films one often gets the sense they are holding back. That they are only hinting at their raunchier elements or skipping any bits where the hero might lose the audience's sympathy. Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl has no such hesitance. It dives headlong into the sex and drugs fueled haze that is the life of 15-year-old Minnie Goetze in early 70's San Francisco. Especially the sex. Diary turns the table on most films about teenage sex where it's the guys dying to get off and the girls are reduced to distant objects of desire. The screenplay, based on a graphic novel series by Phoebe Gloeckner, is refreshingly frank in addressing the problems of a teenage girl with a roaring sex drive.
The easy summary of Diary is that it's the story of a teenage girl having an affair with her mother's boyfriend, but that typically indie capsule doesn't touch on the boundless inventiveness with which Heller tackles this tricky material. Minnie is an aspiring cartoonist and the film expresses the peaks and valleys of her teenage mood swings with bursts of R. Crumb inspired animation which never cease to be startling and effective.
Diary signals its daringness at the start by opening on a closeup of Minnie's ass clad in tight pants as she sashays through the park and the voice over trumpets:
Today I had sex for the first time. Holy Shit!"
It's not provocation for provocation's sake but a declaration of the film's commitment to follow Minnie wherever she takes us, even if it makes us squirm in our seat.
After that opening salvo the film doubles back to see her seduction at the hand of Monroe, her mom's deadbeat boyfriend played without vanity by Alexander Skarsgard. Minnie lives with her younger sister and bohemian mother and most nights her living room is loud with the sound of adults reveling in booze and drugs and sex. It is an intoxicating atmosphere for the smart and curious Minnie and when she realizes this sexy adult is paying special attention to her she is all but swept away by the powerful currents of her sexual awakening.
That she welcomes, even instigates, her own seduction will make some viewers uncomfortable but the movie makes it clear Minnie is blameless for the way she is taken advantage of. We can see the creepy manipulator thinly veiled underneath the sexy Alexandre Skarsgård exterior but Minnie is too overwhelmed by the attentions of this older, experienced man to see what's obvious to the rest of us. Her own sexual aggression is portrayed as an extension of her miserable self-esteem. (It is also hinted her first sexual experience was abusive) She is able to quickly rack up an extensive list of sexual experiences while still believing at her core that men do no find her attractive. When Monroe tries to end it, she doesn't think it's because the situation is a powder keg waiting to explode, she thinks it's because he wants a girl with a smaller ass.
Bel Powley is remarkably assured in the lead role. That the still youthful looking Powley is in her early 20's allows the movie to go to explicit places with its depictions of sexuality and Powley's performance matches the film's daring beat for beat, going to some very exposed places, both physically and emotionally. She and Heller alert us to every flicker and swing of Minnie's careening emotions.
Skarsgård, Powley, and Wiig form the sex triangle in Diary of a Teenage Girl
Kristen Wiig does some of her best screen work to date in the supporting role of Minnie's mother. Wiig plays a woman who bypassed her own coming-of-age film so her parenting is hampered by her own extended adolescence. She tries but her advice is an extension of her own issues and her parental eye is obscured by drugs and raging insecurities. Wiig has posted up her fair share of duds in recent years but she has been consistently interesting in her choice of material. If she can keep it up I'll follow her through any number of flops to reach payoffs like this where her talent finds the material it deserves.
I'm not sure if all the pieces add up to greatness. We'll see how it's sitting with me in a few weeks when I come down out of the thin air of Sundance. For now, I know The Diary of a Teenage Girl engaged me every step of the way. Film lovers should learn the names of Marielle Heller and Bel Powley.
Grade: B+/A-