Wolverhampton, 1993. Sixteen-year-old Johanna (Beanie Feldstein) is sick of her life. She wants to get out of her family’s house, she wants excitement, she wants to have sex, and she wants a car. So, as we see in the new trailer for “How to Build a Girl,” Johanna sets out to reinvent herself and live the life she’s been dreaming of.
She dyes her hair, invests in some top hats, and starts writing music reviews for a paper in London. But that’s not all. Re-introducing herself to her family, she announces, “Johanna Morrigan is dead. This is the legendary Dolly Wilde.” Dolly, née Johanna, has built a new identity from the ground up.
And it seems this is exactly who she is supposed to be. Before long, Dolly is making a name for herself as a rock critic, and she’s discovering that music is her true passion. “Last night, rock ‘n’ roll meant nothing to me. By midnight, it was the most important thing in the world,” she says in the spot. “These are the places you come, where you can dance and scream and be with your own kind, where everything is possible.”
“How to Build a Girl” is based on Caitlin Moran’s best-selling novel of the same name. She penned the adaptation with John Niven, and Coky Giedroyc (“Harlots”) directed.
“[Johanna] makes mistakes, has sex with the wrong people, makes a mess out of a lot of things, but unlike almost every other film that tells that kind of story, she isn’t the victim, she doesn’t die,” Giedroyc told us in an interview about the film. “Actually, she bounces back as the most beautiful version of herself. The one she was always destined to be.”
Feldstein was one of the awardees at the Athena Film Festival in February. Next, she’s portraying Monica Lewinsky in the upcoming third season of “American Crime Story,” which takes on the Clinton impeachment. A premiere date is TBD. “Booksmart,” “Lady Bird,” and “What We Do in the Shadows” are among her other credits.
“How to Build a Girl” premiered at TIFF 2019 and closed the 2020 Glasgow Film Festival. The coming-of-age pic launches on VOD May 8. Emma Thompson, Alfie Allen (“Game of Thrones”), and Paddy Considine (“The Outsider”) also star.
