Movie Review - The Diary of a Teenage Girl

The Diary of a Teenage Girl **½ (out of 5) (R) This novel-based drama about the sexual urges and actions of a 15-year-old girl in the free-spirited San Francisco of the late 1970s offers a mixed bag of virtues and vices, while showing the same among its principals. Minnie (Bel Powley) lives with her divorced Hippie mom (Kristin Wiig) and kid sister. Their dad lives on the other coast, and is nearly as distant emotionally as geographically. Mom’s steady beau (Alexander Skarsgard) becomes an obsession for Minnie, who yearns for more physical affection than she’s getting. Sex appears to be the best form of that, based on how vigorously everyone else pursues it, with glowing reports of their successes.

Appallingly, Skarsgard isn’t just flattered by Minnie’s overtures, but unable to resist, leading to an ongoing series of trysts. When he’s not sufficiently available, Minnie, often with a precocious classmate, gets her kicks from any willing stranger(s), with no regard to safety or consequences throughout an Odyssey of getting high and boinking virtually anyone in reach. It’s not a case of clinical nymphomania; just emotional needs turning into appetites overriding conscience. She becomes quite predatory, while still failing to understand what any of it means to the players and those around them.

On the plus side, we’ve seen more than enough comedies and dramas about horny adolescent males, but very little about their female counterparts, so the idea of treating the flip side of that coin seriously is commendable. Powley’s performance is the film’s biggest asset. She conveys intellect and creativity that makes her inability to grasp sexual context more poignant than it would be for a lesser mind. She’s not a Hollywood hottie, making her loneliness and feelings of invisibility more credible. And for a film about runaway sex between a child and many adults, the visuals are relatively restrained.

Unfortunately, the treatment seems as dated as its setting. Certainly most teens still feel overwhelmed when those hormones kick in, with conflicts galore over how best to manage their desires among all the pressures and influences coming from every direction. In the days before AIDS and so many other STDs when the so-called sexual revolution was gaining steam, Minnie’s options and resources were considerably different. Today’s Minnies have access to far more information - at least in most parts of the country. Her sustained course with those older men is less likely now because of increased law enforcement tools and priorities. That’s not to say such events have been relegated to history; just that the depicted events seem less reflective of these times, making the story more voyeuristic than probative. The fact that the script is all about Minnie, with little insight into the parents and adults who enabled her long walk on the wild side, allows viewers to learn less from what should be a cautionary tale for both kids and parents. (8/21/15)

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