The Dairy of a Teenage Girl Review
RYAN: Let me just preface this review by saying I tend to like disturbing drama. I like it when it shakes me into reality, makes me feel uncomfortable, questions rights and wrongs and the like. This movie is a disturbing drama but I didn’t like it. I didn’t buy it. And less than disturbing, it was just awkwardly inappropriate.
CAROLINE: Whatever are you talking about?
RYAN: This movie is about a 15 year old girl having an ongoing affair with her mother’s 35 year old boyfriend. Isn’t that abuse? And in the context of the film, it’s all treated very normally and acceptable. It’s unacceptable. Now as for the film, It’s fine. I fell like I sat and looked at the screen for an hour and forty minutes and sometimes though it was too much, and then it finally ended. The whole thing is about a 15 year old’s sexual awakening. It’s a risky movie topic and I felt uncomfy the whole time.
CAROLINE: That, um, yeah… that does sound pretty inappropriate when you put it that way. Was it entertaining?
RYAN: There were some things I appreciated about it – the soundtrack, the period design which was very over the top, and the storytelling is cool how it goes from the girl narrating her diary onto cassette tapes and it takes some time to catch up to what has happened. But I didn’t like the movie.
CAROLINE: Who is this girl?
RYAN: Bel Powley. She’s an English actress. Her American accent is good, since this takes place in San Francisco 1976. This is her first film role. She’s really only done TV prior. She is well cast because in terms of the screenplay, she can’t be a perfectly gorgeous girl. She has to be an awkward one and she plays it. But she’s having this affair with the guy played by Alexander Skarsgard, who is hot. It makes it all the more creepier that the only thing that really turns him on is your youth. I mean, it’s just so wrong. And he’s dating her mother! The outrage.
CAROLINE: Is there are least a great, dramatic climax?
RYAN: No. There is somewhat of a resolution but I didn’t find it satisfying.
CAROLINE: How is Alex… and how is Kristen Wiig?!
RYAN: They’re both fine. Kristen has really come into her own as a dramatic actress since leaving SNL. She doesn’t have the biggest part and you have very little sympathy for her character, in a way… but she’s fine. I just don’t know when someone wanted to tell this story. It’s based on a graphic novel but it is very odd to make a movie for adults about a child’s burgeoning sexuality.
CAROLINE: Yes indeed.
RYAN: There were many cool animations used to help visualize her internal monologue and I always enjoyed those.
CAROLINE: That’s a nice addition to the production value.
RYAN: It’s a very racy, twisted coming of age story that just brings you down. I’m not the audience for this and if you are, your name should probably be on a list somewhere.
