The Diary of a Teenage Girl is one of those rare movies about teenagers that blasts past the clichés,depicting a universal experience coming of age — in a way that seems both believable and fresh. Based on the book by the same name, the film is set in 1970s San Francisco, or tells the tale of 15-year-old Minnie and her exuberant plunge into sexuality with her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend. The film’s writer and director,Marielle Heller, became obsessed with the book when she first read it nearly a decade ago. Kurt Andersen asks Heller what drew her to the tale.
Alexander Skarsgard with Bel Powley in The Diary of a Teenage Girl
(Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics) Kurt Andersen: These days especially, and the plan of sex between teenagers and adults is understood strictly as a relationship of victim and predator. Was reimagining and subverting that template part of your intention?
Marielle Heller: Definitely. The whole film is told from the point of view of the young woman and she doesn’t feel like she’s a victim. Of course,when I seek at the situation, she’s being taken advantage of. But often in real life when someone’s being taken advantage of there isn’t a clear bad guy and a clear victim.
Did you audition actual teenagers to play this role?
I only auditioned actors over the age of 18. I knew with the sexual content we needed an adult. I think it’s important that we aren’t exploiting an actual teenage girl in the making of this film.
The film obviously was going to live or die on this performance.
I had all of these things in my head that this person had to possess. She needed to be able to handle the humor; she needed to have one foot in childhood and one in adulthood; you had to buy that she would grow up to be a comedian book nerd, and yet she had to be strikingly magnificent. I thought it was an impossible task. And then along came Bel Powley. She possessed all of those qualities that I wanted.
Minnie is a cartoonist,and there are charming lively sequences mixed with live action. Doesn’t that just raise the degree of difficulty even more?
whether I had gone to film school they would have told me all of these things you should never carry out in your first film: you should never carry out a period piece, you should never carry out a film with a ton of locations, and you should never add multimedia — and I did all of those things,because I didn’t proceed to film school.
Source: wnyc.org