FILM REVIEW: THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL

Charlotte (Kirsten Wiig), Minnie (Bel Powley) and Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård in The Diary of a Teenage Girl.

Adol-l(ic)esentiousness

By John Esther

San Francisco, California, 1976. The kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst is the news story du jour. It is a time of permissibility. The radical politics of the 1960s are gone. Noxious disco, swapping couples, and cocaine are in full swing.

In one particular home in The City by the Bay, 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) is looking for love and loins in the wrong places. A budding artist, she draws a gigantic woman who rules the streets of San Francisco (brought to “life” by animator Sara Gunnarsdottir.) Minnie has dreams, desires, woes and whimsy, which she records in her diary. She also has the desire to sleep with “The handsomest man in the world,” Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård).

However, Monroe is a lot older than Minnie.

Meanwhile, Minnie’s mother, Charlotte (Kristen Wiig continuing to impress), is clueless to her daughter’s daily activities and aspirations. Once a raving beauty, at least she claims, Charlotte spends her life in a drift of drugs, "living nostalgia ([less] humble pie [than] bitter fruit"). Since her divorce to Minnie’s father, Pascal (Christopher Meloni), Charlotte had to find a job at a local library; but work and motherhood do not stop her from partying every chance she gets. Indeed, these responsibilities seem to generate it.

Charlotte's number one party pal is Monroe.

Based on the novel by Phoebe Gloieckner, writer-director Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl is not your typical summer film fare. Few films this frank about teenage sexuality are found in American cinema. (Adolescent desire in French film is old hat.). Americans are still repressed when it comes to sexuality. And the last person who should be thinking about sex in “God’s country” is an American teenage girl. (Never mind, the US has the highest teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world. Thanks to all that jabber about abstinence.)

Rather than receive the typical Hollywood movie meme where the unremarkable teenage dude -- after a series of mishaps, pranks and bullies (usually handsome, rich dudes) -- gets the remarkable girl, The Diary of a Teenage Girl offers a more realistic approach where the awkward adolescent girl gets the older dude – tapping into his psyche where the conquest of the virgin is nearly unstoppable.

Their relationship, rather than titillating, is poised for stress. Monroe knows the ramifications if he gets caught. He will be arrested, lose Charlotte and be plagued as a sex offender the rest of his life, but the triumph for him is worth the risk. Legally speaking, he is a sexual predator. As far as the story goes, at best, he is a damn lascivious fool. For her naive part(s), Minnie seems clueless to the illegalities of such a relationship.

Powley, who was in her early 20s when the film was shot, gives a powerful and believable performance as the titular character. Minnie is awkward yet ambitious, eager yet earnest, troubled and troublesome. She begins to understand the power of her sexuality and it disturbs her. Minnie wants to use it for good via pleasure, not the domination of others via their desire.

Heller seems to agree. Audiences looking for some petty, petite bourgeois punishment for female sexual transgressions will be disappointed. This is not a story about how damaging sex can be for a young teenager, but how it is simply a part of life. It is about identity and growing up. Sex happens.