It has been a long road to make The Diary of a Teenage Girl for first-time director Marielle Heller. Around eight years ago, she received, as a gift from her sister, the semi-autobiographical novel by Phoebe Gloeckner that the film is based on and, subsequently, fought to get the rights. (At one point, she even brought Gloeckner’s agent cookies.) Eventually the author gave in and Heller first turned the book into a play, casting herself as the titular character: a fifteen-year-old discovering her sexuality (played brilliantly by the British actress Bel Powley in the movie). Set in groovy seventies-San Francisco, the film centers around the rise and fall of an affair with her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend (Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgård, respectively), and in turn, becomes a bravely unique and yet, universal coming-of-age story.
Last night’s Cinema Society screening of the movie—it originally premiered at Sundance in January—was at the Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side where Powley, whose expressive face audiences could happily look at all day, explained the importance of capturing this point of view on screen. “When I read this script, I was so surprised because I was finally reading a story that honestly portrayed a teenage girl and [her] sexuality,” she said, wearing the ultimate thinking girl’s brand, Miu Miu. “There weren’t many movies that portrayed women in a 3-D way. As women, we’ve always had to relate to young men. It’s time for a female protagonist out there.”
It was impossible to miss Alexander Skarsgård—even more striking and Adonis-like in person—although, his getup was not quite as bold as his look at the San Francisco premiere where he showed up in drag. And Anna Wintour, a longtime supporter of female storytelling, made a chic statement in a Cubist-inspired Michael Kors cocktail dress.
Heller spoke of the need for creative women to hold each other up and share their voice. “I didn’t feel like there were enough examples of positive stories told from the female perspective about sexuality and teenage girls,” she remarked. “As a society we’re kind of scared, so part of why I wanted to tell this story was that I felt something was missing.” Indeed, with a movie as thought-provoking and well done as Teenage Girl, it’s easy to have a little faith that this dearth will continue to be addressed, and maybe one day, rectified.