Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl (based on on Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel of the same name) is a lot of things: It’s vulgar, it’s sexual, it’s occasionally hard to watch, but above all else, it’s one of the best films of the year.
Set in 1970s San Francisco, The Diary of a Teenage Girl tells the story of Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley), a 15-year-old in the midst of her creative and sexual awakening. The film, with its general frankness about teen girl horniness and explicit displays of sex, will push past many viewers’ comfort zones as it explores Minnie’s life (uniquely and exclusively) through her own narrative. Her audio diary, stored on a collection of cassette tapes that she hides under her bed, serves as narration for the story, beginning on the day that she enthusiastically loses her virginity to her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård), and continues over the course of several months as her life simultaneously—and paradoxically—unravels and evolves.While a teen girl beginning an affair with her mother’s older lover is hardly an uncommon narrative in fiction, it rarely, if ever, is it dealt with as honestly and thoughtfully as it is in Teenage Girl. Minnie is painted as neither victim nor vixen and while Monroe’s predatory actions are never condoned, they’re certainly not the movie’s focus.
It’s a credit to Skarsgård’s talent (and the transformative power of the 1970s porn ‘stache) that a man as handsome as Monroe is, through the course of the film, reduced to a pathetic and abject sleaze, but to narrow in on Monroe’s development—or even his sex crimes—would be a mistake. The Diary of a Teenage Girl is—as the title suggests—a story about Minnie.
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