Movie Review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl

3.5 stars out of 5

So this is the story of a 15-year-old girl who starts having an affair with her mom’s 35-year-old boyfriend. Spoiler alert: If you’re waiting for the dude to be hauled off in handcuffs for statutory rape, you will be disappointed. Because the movie isn’t about that, man: It’s San Francisco in the mid-70s, the sexual revolution is still reverberating, and this awkward-but-blossoming teenager is breathlessly figuring out her special place in the world. So don’t get hung up on your bourgeois “laws” and “ethics,” you square.

But, if you can get past that, this is a pretty interesting movie. Empowerment is all the rage these days, and this coming-of-age tale has it in spades. We kind of start with the old “If a girl sleeps around, she’s a slut, but if a guy does it, he’s a stud” idea (which I never really understood, because in my little corner of the world, guys who sleep around are assholes), and then the film takes the concept to another level. Our protagonist, Minnie, gains self-worth with each sexual encounter. Having been with a grown man, she then chews up and spits out the nervous high-school boys (not literally).

There is a quality young actress portraying Minnie, so that adds much needed gravitas to the character. She is Bel Powley, not to be confused with Bell’s palsy. London-born Powley has what I’ll call a “British face” which works here; it makes Minnie look like an outsider, unattractively attractive and/or vice-versa, loathing/loving/discovering her body and the, ahem, pleasures of the flesh. It is the ’70s so Minnie hasn’t yet heard Pat Benatar imploring us to stop using sex as a weapon.

Kristen Wiig does a great job as Minnie’s mom. She’s single and loving it in the swingin’ San-Fran Seventies, but still occasionally feels the pull to be a responsible mother to her two daughters. The usually terrific Alexander Skarsgård doesn’t get to flex his acting muscles too much here; he’s the mellow, lazy, vaguely sleazy dude dating the mother… the daughter… the mother… the daughter… Oh mama mia! He wishes he knew how to quit her! Chris Meloni is not quite believable as the grown-up — Wiig’s intellectual former boyfriend in New York.

Some aspects of Diary… didn’t really work for me. Apparently it’s a semi-autobiographical story, so all the “oh, naughty me, look at these bad things I did, with the sexing and the drugging and the hey laaaaaady” really feels like a humblebrag. (R.I.P. Harris Wittels) There’s also this once-in-a-while R. Crumb-esque animation that pops up, which to me is screaming “We’re a quirky art film!” The point they are trying to make with the animation is that DRAWING and ART is really the empowering thing, not just “doing it.” But the filmmakers are so enamored with teenage/adult copulation, the art stuff only gets lip service (not literally): We see Minnie with a sketchpad but it never seems that important to her.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this. The story wraps up in a satisfying way. And there’s a cool soundtrack too (Dwight Twilley! Television!). I’ll just have to give them the benefit of the doubt: Maybe there’s a deleted scene where Skarsgård is arrested for violating California’s age-of-consent law, and everyone stands around going, “Wow, that was a really, really bad thing that was happening here.”