‘The Diary of a Teenaged Girl’ follows teen’s sexual coming-of-age in ’70s San Francisco
– FILM REVIEW – By Cate Marquis –
There are two things to note about “The Diary of a Teenaged Girl.” First, despite the title, it is not appropriate for actual teenaged girls, it is for adults, particularly adult women. Secondly, it helps to know who underground comics artist Aline Kominsky, wife of fellow comics artist R. Crumb, is.
“The Diary of a Teenaged Girl” is a big screen version of the graphic novel of the same name, a self-narrated exploration of a young girl’s sexual coming-of-age that is often both funny and profane.
The year is the pre-AIDS 1976 but San Francisco is still stuck in the ’60s. This is especially true for Minnie Goetze’s (Bel Powley) free-spirited counterculture mom Charlotte (Kristen Wiig). Minnie shares an apartment with her divorced mom and nosy younger sister. Her mom’s ex (Christopher Meloni), and Minnie’s stepfather (her biological father is long gone), is a much more buttoned-down academic who lives in New York. Minnie’s mom has a laid-back boyfriend named Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgard), whom Minnie calls “the handsomest man in the world.” Minnie is like many 15-year-old girls – filled with romantic ideas about love, unsure about her looks, curious about sex, and trying to discover who she is. The film opens with Minnie walking through a park and musing about how her life has just changed, now that she has had sex for the first time – with her mother’s boyfriend. The event prompts Minnie to start a secret diary, which she begins to illustrate as her story unfolds. One of the first things Minnie writes is that is that she thinks losing her virginity makes her “an adult,” a key starting point on this journey towards real adulthood.
Marielle Heller directs “Diary of a Teenaged Girl,” based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel detailing her sexual coming of age in the mid-1970s counterculture San Francisco. In the pre-AIDS ’70s, the sexual revolution is in full swing and San Francisco was still stuck in the ’60s, with a happy hippy culture of laid-back attitudes. The film is also packed with spot-on cultural references from the ’70s, including Rocky Horror midnight shows and the music of the era.
This is not a film for everyone. The film is sexually frank, and includes exploitative, uncomfortable situations like a relationship between an adult man and a teenaged girl. There is a touch of “Lolita” in that but what changes things is that the story is told from Minnie’s point-of-view. There are plenty of films about teenaged boys’ sexual coming-of-age but similar stories of teen girls are another matter. What is different, even ground-breaking, is how boldly honest and nonjudgmental this film is about female sexuality, and the light, even comic tone Minnie uses to tell her own story. Filtering events through her innocent, unknowing yet intelligent, dry humor-filled, adolescent point-of-view flavors those events, and we also see how those perceptions shift as her views evolve, The film is by turns funny, touching, disturbing and often true, presenting universal truths of growing up as a young woman, as she learns to find her own way and have confidence in herself.
One of the strengths of the film is 23-year-old British actress Bel Powley, whose still, sad face and large heavy-lidded eyes seem perfect way as an observer of her own experiences. Powley is fully convincing as a teen and her voice-over narration shapes the story and reveals how Minnie changes and matures. The film wisely keeps the focus on teenaged Minnie, and does not let the role for bigger star Kristen Wiig expand too far. The audience seems the adults’ flaws, and then strengths, in this story long before Minnie does, mirroring the way it takes teens a while to grasp what is really going on. A key turning point is when Minnie discovers the works of Aline Kominsky, an early feminist comic artist and wife of fellow underground comic artist R. Crumb. Kominsky’s woman-centric underground comics, the forerunners of graphic novels, open a world of possibilities in Minnie’s mind.
“The Diary of a Teenaged Girl” opens Friday, August 21, at the Tivoli Theater.
© Cate Marquis
