Bel Powley stars as a teenage girl on the cusp of her sexual awakening, in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”. Minnie Goetze (Powley) is longing for love, acceptance and a sense of purpose in the adult world. Minnie begins a complex love affair with her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, and object of her hormone affection, Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgard). What follows is a sharp, awkward and provocative account of one girl’s sexual and artistic awakening. During the first half of the film, i found myself struggling to understand where this movie was going and how it would speak to me creatively as a reviewer. As the film went on, i found myself (Like Minnie) opening my eyes wider and wider to the quest of losing ones virginity, but then the backlash of the almost always regret that follows with it. The pieces began forming together into this beautiful piece of artistic cinematography, as well as honest look into the female perspective of negative impacts to the choices made by such characters. I greatly enjoyed this film, but i would only recommend it to the female audience. I can’t see this having much crossover value with that of the opposite sex. The movie is a little too graphic with it’s sexual scenes and tones, but i understand what first time Director Marielle Heller was aiming for with such a direction. She shoots the situations in eye opening circumstances to wake up the viewer. The things happening in the movie don’t seem wrong to the characters until it’s too late, but we see it in advance because we can take a step back and view it all in complete form. I haven’t seen the responsibilities of sex viewed in-depth in female protagonist form since “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. If that 33 year span seems impossible to comprehend, it’s because Hollywood has always had a problem telling this story from a female’s perspective. I am glad that “Diary” had as much intensity artistically as it did intellectually. The film’s look feels like it’s cast in the 70’s, but it’s never really made clear. This combined with an imaginary animated sidekick in Minnie’s head, give the film a dreamy and sarcastic backdrop that narrates all of the emotions that Minnie is experiencing. However, this movie would only be scenes if it weren’t for the cast that makes it memorable. Powley gives a performance to cast her into the limelight. Her character is a quiet storm that becomes powerful with every experience. There is quite the transformation in her over the course of 97 minutes, and that mostly has to do with the experiences that we are there sitting right next to her for, in this movie. Skarsgard’s character is slimy, but he’s very good in taking advantage of Minnie’s emotions. The two are perfectly cast, and their tremendous height difference makes it easier to see this from an adult Vs child perspective. I wish the script would’ve had more for Wiig, but she goes almost unnoticed in the film’s first act. By the end of the movie, she gets to showoff a little bit of what has made her one of the more featured players in the Drama genre, over the last year. Kristen has shown that she came make any role (big or small) memorable with the turning of her creative switches. “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” casts an intriguing plot to get the pages turning. It’s unapologetic in it’s content, and presents perhaps the most up front look into the misunderstood world of womanhood.

7/10