The Diary of a Teenage Girl
In 1970s San Francisco, fifteen-year-old Minnie begins an affair with her mother's boyfriend and records her sexual and creative awakening in an audio diary.
It's a refreshing, and, sadly, rare take on a girl coming into her own.
Set in San Francisco in 1976, the film follows Minnie Goetze, a fifteen-year-old aspiring cartoonist who begins a sexual relationship with Monroe, the adult boyfriend of her mother, Charlotte. Minnie records her experiences on cassette tapes, narrating her desire, confusion and growing sense of herself as an artist. Adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic novel, it keeps the encounter in view: Monroe is a grown man, Minnie a child, his conduct a breach of trust, not a romance.
Critics noted that Marielle Heller directs from inside Minnie's perspective without endorsing what happens to her. The camera stays close to the girl's appetite and self-regard while letting the adult's behaviour register as damaging. Reviewers praised the film for declining both the scolding tone of a cautionary tale and the soft gloss that would make the relationship look appealing.
For a psychodynamic clinician, the film offers a study of adolescent desire and emerging identity, and of how a predatory adult exploits a young person's wish to be seen. The audio diary becomes a bid to author one's own experience, and the animated drawings externalise an inner world still taking shape.
Director
Marielle Heller
Marielle Heller (born 1979) is an American film director who also works as an actor. Her films attend to adolescence and the formation of a self, to loneliness, and to the inner lives of people living at the margins. Her directorial debut, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), follows a fifteen-year-old whose relationship with her mother's adult boyfriend the film presents without endorsement. Later work includes Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), a study of a writer's isolation and deception.
Details
- 2015
- 102 min
- United States
- English
- Film
- Sundance 2015 premiere (U.S. Dramatic Competition); Gotham Award Breakthrough Actor 2015 won (Bel Powley); Film Independent Spirit Award Best First Feature 2016 won