The diary is a three act storytelling device in which a physical item containing secrets is discovered and creates conflict and crisis.
In “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” the item is the latest in 1976 technology: a cassette tape recorder. It belongs to the girl of the title and chronicles her affair with her mother’s thirtysomething boyfriend.
There is a long troubling history of teenage girl coming-of-age sexuality in film: the predatory “Lolita,” a terrifying “thirteen” and the upbeat “Juno” with Ellen Page who gets revenge on a pedophile in the visceral “Hard Candy.”
And in the current season of “Masters of Sex” on Showtime, a high school girl uses sex to rebel against her sex researcher mother.
The teenager in “Diary” is all and none of these. So does “Diary,” written and directed by a woman, say anything new on the topic?
Considering the heightened cultural sensitivity to sexual abuse its easy to look at “Diary” with a jaundiced eye. It portrays the adult behavior as irresponsible and criminal but shows the fifteen year old girl, with body issues and regular teenage insecurities, actively fulfilling desires she doesn’t understand but feels strongly and naively mistaking sex for love.
She less survives the harrowing experience than eventually – and luckily – escapes from it. She emerges empowered in a sense and with clearer sense of who she is and what she wants.
The latter includes becoming a graphic novelist like underground cartoonist Aline Kominsky, an animated version of whom converses with and encourages her.
The film is based on a 2002 “semi autobiographical” illustrated novel by Phoebe Gloeckner.
Actress-turned-first time director Marielle Heller captures the era’s conventions and styles many of which are worn by hip single mom Kristen Wiig. A laid-back Alexander Skarsgärd plays the older man whose motives are not very complicated.
And Bel Powley, a 22-year old British actress with dark bangs and a round face, is likable and convincing even when the narrative turns ugly and over the top.
Setting the film in the morally permissive San Francisco of the 1970s, where sex and drugs were common, keeps it true to Gloeckner’s novel but also allows a certain detachment. It turns one person’s story into a cautionary tale whose lessons are not always clear.
*** Three stars
With Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgärd, Christopher Meloni, Abby Wait, Miranda Bailey, Madeline Waters, Austin Lyon, Quinn Nagle. Produced by Miranda Bailey, Anne Carey, Bert Hamelinck. Written and directed by Marielle Heller. Rated R; nudity, sexual references, mature theme. Approximate running time: 102 minutes.
Tags: Aline Kominsky, Bel Powley, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Kristen Wiig Posted by