Film review: The diary of a teenage girl
Cert 18
Four Stars
Fifteen-year-old Minnie starts her diary with a confession; “I had sex today. Holy shit”. When her lover is revealed to be her mother’s 34-year-old boyfriend, Monroe, it begs the question: is she doing something bad or is something bad being done to her?
It’s a dilemma the film revels in, depicting scenes almost voyeuristic in their intimacy that smudge the line between consent and abuse. That this all takes place in the promiscuous, drug-addled days of 1970s San Francisco only serves to muddy the waters further. On the one hand, Minnie is sure enough of her sexuality to describe it in minute detail to her portable tape-recorder. On the other, she isn’t mature enough to express it to a real life man. The film’s prolonged play-fighting scenes – including one where she giggles “he’s raping me” – are nothing short of excruciating.
But it’s the most unflinching, honest portrayal of teenage female sexuality since last year’s Blue is the Warmest Colour, which also happens to be a graphic novel adaptation.
Minnie is an aspiring cartoonist, and the screen is often filled with her lumpy, lewd sketches that illustrate a rich inner life that’s suffocated and bewildered by reality.
This film isn’t really for teenagers at all. Not because it’s explicit or sweary (although it definitely is), but because hindsight is a wonderful thing and, like adolescence itself, Diary’s sobering wisdom and Bel Powley’s star-making performance are best appreciated in adulthood.