Diary of a Teenage Girl rewrites coming-of-age ritual

By Katherine Monk

“I had sex today….” are the first words we hear from the mouth of Minnie Goetz, the 15-year-old diarist at the heart of Marielle Heller’s award-winning debut feature, and it’s just the shocker we need to launch this comic coming-of-age rocket.

Minnie isn’t your typical heroine. A little awkward and prone to surly bouts of sass with her mother (Kristen Wiig) and little sister, Gretel (Abby Wait), Minnie is a far cry from the archetypal virgin who tiptoes through the tulips of experience.

She is curious and horny – not to mention a minor – which puts her on the very margins of traditional movie empathy. It also makes her highly believable, and perhaps the most authentic representation of burgeoning female sexuality that we’ve ever seen on the big screen.

What’s even more fascinating about Heller’s adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s quasi-autobiographical graphic novel is that it opens after the fact: Minnie has already been deflowered, which means we’re not watching the painstaking prelude – or the stuttering insecurity that generally accompanies stories of boys looking to lose their virginity.

When we first make eye contact with Powley’s open gaze, she’s still buzzing from the pollination. “I wonder if I look any different?” she muses, taking a long glance in the mirror, looking for the official brand of womanhood.

In other words, the movie begins after the traditional climax, which means the rest of the film and its quirky, compelling and frequently challenging narrative follows the consequences of Minnie’s symbolic entrance into adulthood – and there are many, because Minnie didn’t have sex with just anyone.

She lost her virginity to her mother’s boyfriend, Monroe, played here with as much charm as smarm by Alexander Skarsgard. It’s all a little icky, and it’s made even stickier when the sex does not stop: Minnie and Monroe are boinking for most of the movie, forcing everyone in the film to live in a state of semi-delusion.

The only time we hear “honest” reflection is through the voice-overs as Minnie confesses her thoughts to her diary, but even these flowery entries are full of juvenile ego and reek of willful self-creation.

Minnie has turned herself into the intrepid protagonist of her own epic, and there’s something beautiful about that because we rarely see women as products of their own imagination. They tend to be passive characters reacting to the actions of others.

But Minnie is no mouse. Seizing the moment for her own satisfaction, Minnie grabs life by the proverbial horns and gives us a memorable tour of the female mind — where love and sex are often synonymous, with frequently tragic results.

The beauty of Heller’s movie, and Gloeckner’s prose, is that most of this feels like comedy. To be sure, there are moments of profound drama and gut-wrenching catharsis, but Diary of a Teenage Girl finds the perfect pitch as it navigates the choppy straits of sexual awareness and female power.

Thanks to a fearless performance from breakout star Bel Powley, we can’t help but love Minnie – even when she does completely moronic things – because she feels so real, and so recognizable.

More importantly, she never sees herself as a victim.

If anything, her blossoming sexual presence is giving her more power in the adult world, and that’s where Heller finds the most dramatic mileage as she makes her audience weigh in on how women are finally valued in our society.

Before this movie starts, Minnie was a kid without power or visibility. But once she realizes her youthful figure, cherub face and virginal aura have the power to seduce older men, everything changes.

Heller’s film takes us inside the morphing landscape inside Minnie’s mind, through the voice-over and dialogue, but also through some inspired visuals that pull from Gloeckner’s pen and ink drawings.

The fluid relationship between the inside and outside worlds brings a dynamic quality to the whole endeavour that makes it compelling because we’re not quite sure how things will turn out, or how Minnie’s personal empowerment will translate in the eyes of outsiders. Will they see her as teen slut, or female heroine?

Not even Minnie is sure, but thanks to Powley’s potent performance as the wide-eyed nymph, we’re able to reserve judgment – and just follow the giddy arc as it glides through gorgeously detailed 1970s décor.

Wiig and Skarsgard have the tougher roles as the de facto grown-ups because we expect them to be responsible, but they, too, are completely screwed up and self-absorbed, making everyone in the movie – even the pure little sister – a flawed human being.

Without black or white, good or bad, Diary of a Teenage Girl could have been frustrating, but it’s not. If anything, this movie is completely energizing because it so fully captures Minnie’s changing relationship with the outside world – from her point of view.

From her breathless confessions of true love, to her sweaty accounts of coitus, Heller, Powley and Gloeckner pull us onto the mental merry-go-round of the female teen, where a little danger is always more preferable than dull, and sexual power is the forbidden toy that suddenly lands in your lap, begging to be played with.

@katherinemonk

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