Sydney Film Festival Review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Kristen Wiig & Bel Powley in
The Diary of a Teenage Girl

On one hand, The Diary of a Teenage Girl is "one for the gals" in an endless stream of coming-of-age tales that seem almost exclusively male. The depth and treatment of a young woman growing up too fast is a bit of a novelty in it of itself.  Not satisfied with her body, but not fatalistic about her prospects either, Minnie (Bel Powley) honors and pursues her curiosities and seeks that which makes her feel most alive and empowered--however problematic and detrimental--emboldening her to make other choices in her life to push herself forward into adulthood. It's a polarizing experience.  On one hand, Minnie learns valuable lessons early in life, but she's also a rare bird who has the natural mettle to withstand the slings and arrows that would take most kids her age down.  Part of her personal education involves a relationship with her mother's lover Monroe (Alexander Skarsgaard), a man over twice her age, that is quite uncomfortable to watch at times. For a while, it's hard to decipher which direction the story will take, due in part to probably a little too much time documenting her descent into her unhealthy obsession. And while the film eventually takes a stand against the predatory nature of her paramour, her experience feels very singular. In a sea of kiddie fiddlers, she stands up as an anomaly of a survivor who has the fortitude and good fortune to get her ending tied up in a pretty bow.

Minnie is like Juno MacGuff's big city cousin.  She comes in a long line of young sexually bold teenagers over the decades including Dede Truitt from The Opposite of Sex and Enid from Ghost World.  However, unlike those girls, Minnie isn't too big for her britches, putting on airs.  She's overly self-aware, but there's a raw part of her whose innocence that doesn't feel as much of a construction as her predecessors.  And her POV is decidedly feminine.  However, Minnie's world is quite insular.  While she doesn't have great wealth, she does live in San Francisco, attends a private school, and her parents (her father only visits from the East Coast) have no boundaries and strange rules.  She is directly exposed to plenty of liberal drug-induced excess and debauchery, and little Minnie gets it all covered before she lands a high school diploma (for which she will never have use for in the future or so she says).  It's not an environment most people can identity with, and along with emerging relatively unscathed from a relationship with an ephebophile, her plight is unrealistic on a couple of levels.  

Like with Ghost World and American Splendour, Diary features a budding graphic comic artist and her illustrative imagination steps sparingly into frame every so often. It's a tidy little directorial stamp that isn't too intrusive.  San Fransico circa 1976 is captured surprisingly well.  The fashion and hair looked authentic without getting in their own way and drawing attention to themselves.  Powler holds the camera with her wide blue eyes shining below her Cleopatra do. She's like a less sardonic version of Janeane Garofalo.  Skarsgaard is unassumingly creepy and less cartoonish than Joseph Fiennes in Running With Scissors. Wiig chain smokes her way through her scenes, but she continues to show her range as a dramatic actress. A bit too long, sometimes troublesome in nature, and somewhat unsettling to watch at times, Diary is an extremely well put-together film.