I first heard about this film from David Bax on Battleship Pretension. I’d been wanting to see it since he praised it, but my wife selected it out of her own interest. The film has some great visual style and is very well acted by the cast. I give The Diary of a Teenage Girl the Not Quite Golden, Ponyboy rating.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a really solid film
Minnie (Bel Powley) is a high school girl living in San Francisco in the 1970s. Her passions include art and her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard). She documents her interests with drawings, recordings, and text as she wanders down this journey of self-discovery.
Bel Powley shines in this film. She is odd, insightful, and really hits the emotions very well. Her interactions with Wiig and Skarsgard are great. She is clearly going through an adolescent-existential crisis and love seems to be the nucleus of her problems. She is constantly wondering if someone will love her. Could someone love her? She seeks this answer through sexual exploration and the impact it has on her in powerful.
Directed and adapted by Marielle Heller with her big screen directorial debut is quite impressive. There are tons of great visuals in this film as Minnie’s drawings often come to life and fuse with reality. There is a scene where Minnie is in the bathtub and suddenly the camera is below her looking up and it seems she is in an ocean. The visual metaphors for Minnie’s struggles are often demonstrated in this way.
The art style of the film is beautiful!
The film is about a young girl’s sexual exploration so there is some risqué content. There is also a lot of drug abuse. The film feels very 70s, which my point-of-view is based on other movies set in the 70s. I definitely think it’s a film that is worth watching for many reasons. Filmmakers can appreciate the talent, and many people can relate to the themes of confidence and loneliness.
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