The Diary of a Teenage Girl, a pedophile drama gussied up with non-judgmental
makeup, strikes one as more odd than innovative. Fifteen-year-old Minnie Goetze (a rather good Bel Powley) opens the film declaring, “I had sex today,” and you sure can tell it changed her. Set in the free-love 1970’s in San Francisco, Marielle Heller’s film goes the coy route while ostensibly digging underneath the surface for unplumbed emotions and gut reactions.
Animated sequences meant to jar in a quaint manner achieve annoyance as much as anything more profound. Just for good measure, Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgard play Minnie’s mom and her mom’s 30-something boyfriend–the lothario who actually goes to bed with his girlfriend’s daughter. She thinks him “the handsomest man in the world.” The creep factor here is off the charts yet you definitely get the feeling we’re being asked not to moralize.
The acting is top-shelf all around in The Diary a Teenage Girl, the insight not so much. Wiig’s character is so self-absorbed she actually seems more pissed off that Minnie stole her boyfriend than that his seducing her may have caused her daughter any harm. Skarsgard’s character is so laid back he naturally begs the question, “Was the hippie generation so mellow they created a moral vacuum around themselves?” (oops, I forgot!)
Heller and co-screenwriter Phoebe Gloekner, on whose memoir the movie is based, only answer the question part-way. Had they written a few more hard-hitting scenes where they were so absolutely necessary rather than resorting to the animated tomfoolery and humdrum amorality, we might have had a real gem here. As it is, The a Diary of a Teenage Girl is certainly thought-provoking and engaging, but ultimately dull around its holier-than-thou edges.