Review of The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) by David M — 02 Sep 2015

There comes a time in life when after an incident or an event happens you are consciously aware you are not the same person. The circumstances change and you discover a new part of yourself that was hidden in the deepest dungeons of your personality, and there is no turning back. It can be something professional, financial, social, and/or sexual. Well, Minnieâ??s life changed when she had sex for the first time when she was 15 years old or so.

â??The Diary of a Teenage Girlâ??, the film debut of Marielle Heller, is some sort of Nabokovian nymphomaniac memoir with its own charm and imaginative spark. Bel Powley gives a fantastic breakthrough performance as Minnie: a teenager from San Francisco in the 1970s with a low self esteem in regards to being liked by boys; the usual standard for self-esteem in adolescents. Things start off when she discovers not only how to take the reins of her sex life but also she learns that she is able to do so, and she does this by sleeping with her motherâ??s boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgard). Being brought up by a beautiful woman with lots of boys and cocaine lined outside her doorstep (the amazing Kristen Wiig), Minnie always felt ugly and unattractive, therefore she did not have it easy. However, her social and urban atmosphere (the emergent 1970s in the most hip city, San Francisco) and the circumstances that follow that awkward and quite unethical sexual encounter will take Minnie into a rabbit hole of sex and drugs, a rather hasty path for a girl with her personality. As this coming-of-age film unravels and Minnieâ??s sexual journey intensifies, she will discover the importance of integrity and self-respect within a macho society, creativity, and human growth.

It poses important questions that would create altercation with various conservative views about growth and initiation rites. A handful of cultures believe that having intercourse is the passage to adulthood. However, is it really? Who decides when a person has become into an adult? Also, is age the variable that makes people more experienced or less experienced in differentiating between lust and love? Are adults exempted more from scrutiny in this case than teens for not being able to draw the line between concepts (love and lust) that were advertently merged by religious morals across history? In this case, beyond any possible diseases, is it wrong if a young person gets an urge to go on a sexual â??discoveryâ?? quest? Is not that what most animal beings do (meaning of course having the sexual drive)?

Written with wit and accompanied with a great soundtrack representative of the era, â??The Diary of a Teenage Girlâ?? is an intimate portrayal of a certain aspect of teenage life. It features incredible performances, a beautiful production design, and a fluid story arc. Furthermore, it has incredible and creative comic-book-like animations that depict Minnieâ??s mind and submerges us completely into her subjective experience; not only are we listening to her narration, but we also see some of her thoughts and feelings. This film is kind of a taboo-breaker that deals with a quite sensitive subjectâ?¦soâ?¦what are you waiting for to go watch it?