Unlike the others which are about larger-than-life characters, The Diary of a Teenage Girl is about a fairly ordinary school girl living with her solo mum in 1970s San Francisco. Minnie is somewhat neurotic about her appearance and lack of sex-life. Left alone with her mother's boyfriend, she takes advantage of the situation to loose her virginity. Being set in 1970s San Francisco, drugs are a big feature of the film and Minnie experiments with drugs as much as she does with sex.
The narration of the film is done through the device of Minnie's audio diary, recorded on cassette tape. Some of the scene transitions are done using the cartoons that Minnie draws, which echo the origins of the film as a graphic novel, and also the drug culture of the time.
Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård are effective as teenage girl and adult lover, with the power in the relationship shifting back and forth between them. The setting in the 1970s feels partly familiar and partly foreign -- emphasising that things have changed a lot both in technology but also socially in the last 40 years. It is a stark contrast to the paranoia parenting of the 21st century.
Ian's rating 4/5
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