'The Diary Of A Teenage Girl' A Review

The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a coming of age drama about a 15-year-old girl Minnie(Bel Powley) in 1976 San Francisco who gets into a sexual relationship with her hippy mother's 35-year-old boyfriend based on the graphic novel of the same name. Minnie begins an audio diary after her first sexual encounter which is utilized as the film's through line. She is also a budding cartoonist and periodic animation is used to progress and heighten the narrative.

Aspects of the film have a poignant resonance- Minnie's age-specific struggle to fit in and find her place, her obsession with sex, and her experimentation with various substances. And Powley provides a dynamic and brave performance. There is however a casualness and feeling of normalcy throughout the film regarding these volatile situations that is quite disturbing. It is clear that Minnie doesn't view her relationship as abuse, doesn't view herself as a victim, so, as the filmmakers profess, they are "staying true to the voice of the character". But there is never a point where the relationship is called out, there is no justice, no reckoning, and because of this lack of any kind of denouncement there is almost no acknowledgement of how inappropriate the relationship at the center of the story is.

There is also pervasive substance use and abuse and there is virtually no comment on that either. With a lack of judgement on either of these two main issues from the filmmakers, even if the intention is to portray it how it was or how the main character viewed it, there is a passive compliance assigned to these bad even awful situations. Without a clear message we are left to make sense of the film's thematic nebulousness and it seems like the attitude of the film is, for the most part, all this is OK, all this is relatively normal.

A confused, depressing, modern day Lolita masquerading as a coming-of-age dramedy.

Don't See It.