“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” Is As Messy As Other Indie Teen Sex Dramedies

It’s 1976 and, as she enthuses to her tape-recorder diary, 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) has just had sex for the first time—with her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård). Based on the hybrid graphic novel/regular novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, The Diary of a Teenage Girl flips the script of teen-focused cinema: instead of horny male escapades and angst, it focuses on horny female escapades and angst.

That alone would put the film in rarefied air, but it also makes itself distinct among indie teen sex dramedies by doubling (maybe tripling) down on the “sex” part. It revels in Minnie’s lustiness, both in her dreamy everyday musings to her diary and in graphic-novel-inspired animated sequences flowing across the screen, visualizing her yearning libido with blooming flowers and and the like. That’s to say nothing of graphic depictions of the act itself; Diary has some of the most unabashedly explicit pubescent fucking since Y Tu Mamá También. If you read people praising Powley for being “brave,” well, as usual, that’s code for “lots of nudity.” Actually, she gives quite an impressive performance, capturing the constant, unsure physical and attitudinal posturing of youth. Minnie, coming of age in a turbulent cultural climate and an extraordinarily laissez-faire home situation, is basically figuring out life on her own, and the movie chronicles her many skips and stumbles (mostly stumbles) down this path.

The script itself stumbles as well, unfortunately, with first-time writer/director Marielle Heller exhibiting symptoms both of first-film jitters and unsure novel adaptation. The diary aspect, which presumably guides the book, comes across in the film more as an excuse to have voiceover narration, which is used so inconsistently that it feels less like an organic part of the film than as a cheap method of exposition. In addition, whole subplots seem to have had their beginning and ending translated from page to screen without the vital meat needed to make them resonate. Even though the movie establishes a standoffish relationship between Minnie and her younger sister—who clearly wants to be closer to her—and culminates in a heartwarming moment at the end, the sister barely figures as a character in between, thus leeching away any emotional impact at this plot thread’s resolution.

Still, Powley acts as a potent centering force, and the rest of the cast ably assists. Wiig continues to demonstrate her dramatic chops, although she feels a touch underutilized, even if her character’s frequent absences are part of the setup. Christopher Meloni, on the other hand, makes a vivid impression in a mere handful of scenes as Minnie’s delightfully pompous ex-stepfather. Skarsgård exists more as a symbol than a human being, but he expresses guilt-riddled ’70s dude frustration well enough.

Since its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January, many have praised Diary as a fearless portrait of female sexuality, but I’m not entirely sure it can be said to be wholly sex-positive. There’s a direct correlation between Minnie’s sexual exploration and her degrading psychological well-being: Every time she tries something daring (blowing a guy in a back alley alongside her best friend, trying a threesome, etc.), things get worse for her. Like many a teenager, Minnie’s trying to navigate where sex intersects with love, and the movie seems to have absorbed her confusion over what she’s truly after. The way it shakes out, the story rather unfortunately ties sexual openness to inner emptiness and a lack of self-actualization, a reactionary mode that one might not have expected from it early on. Also, for a film so steeped in the female point-of-view, it weirdly steps off of fixating on male bodies too much. Skarsgård showed his dick in True Blood, so you know he’d probably have been up for it here.

Most galling of all, as the plot wraps up, Minnie has somehow learned the “love yourself before trying to get anyone else to love you” lesson, despite nothing tangible in the plot handing this to her. In that respect, The Diary of a Teenage Girl isn’t as different from most other indie coming-of-age films as one might initially believe. Nevertheless, giving girls their own messy coming-of-age movies is a net positive. And it certainly establishes both Powley and Heller as artists to watch.