I was able to get some time to speak with Marielle Heller on the opening day of “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.”
Here’s a short review
“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is an important movie for a couple of reasons. First, here is a girl played by Bel Powley (in a star-making performance) who spends the entire movie talking about sex. It’s ’70s San Francisco, and 15-year-old Minnie is horny. And she is exploring and making shitty decisions, like sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend. But she is not guilty and she is not shamed for them. Her decisions help her grow. And oh yeah, she has sex. Lots of sex. Marielle Heller takes Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel and introduces us to a young woman whom we have not seen on screen before. Powley just owns this part. Minnie expresses so many of the things that girls think about (yes, just as much as boys), and first time writer-director Heller does a fantastic job of telling this all-too-rare coming-of-age story in a colorful, innocent, yet not entirely safe San Francisco.
Please take a listen to a woman who is going to be a force on the film scene for some time (Sorry for the audio quality.) Also available on itunes:
https://medium.com/media/69c486c771cd9a75e890181bdffd7909/href