Review of The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) by Wesley B — 08 Sep 2015
Brave and bold, The Diary of a Teenage Girl takes on easily some of the diciest material - a teenage girl and her sexual experimentation with an older man - and does not look away or try to soften the edges.
It's a reminder that we become who we become not just because of the good experiences, but how we survive the bad ones. I'm most impressed by the way the film captures the real zeitgeist of the seventies, when all of America seemed in some sort of collective nervous breakdown, and kids grew up too fast, exposed to far too much by careless adults whose inappropriate behavior seemed beyond every boundary.
The actors playing the high schoolers are universally brilliant, but it's the adults -Wiig, Skarsgard and Meloni in particular - who capture the mood of the time. It's easy enough to judge these characters, and all the inappropriate situations; it's another thing to listen to these characters wend their way through a complicated time, and appreciate that no one has a map to these uncharted waters.
Brilliant, messy, intense... Not easily forgotten.
This review of The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) was written by Wesley B on 08 Sep 2015.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl has generally received positive reviews.
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