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“So I had to figure out how to direct.” She took her script to the Sundance Writer’s Lab followed by the Director’s Lab, where she “had film school crammed into five weeks.” By the time she emerged, Heller felt she had found her voice as a director. “I wasn’t a director, but I couldn’t even imagine somebody else directing my movie,” said Heller. Heller has painted a confident portrait of a young woman who retains her self-worth throughout the trials and tribulations of maturation.Īfter receiving the go-ahead from Gloeckner to discard her reverence for the graphic novel and bring the story to cinematic fruition, Heller, much like Minnie and her sexuality, had to figure things out as she went along.
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But even at its nadir, Minnie asserts herself in the relationship. Passionate sex gets mistaken for true intimacy as Minnie learns that sex can be a force of destruction. Minnie’s feelings intensify, and the relationship devolves into a nebulous battle of wills. She pursues her mother’s boyfriend, discovering the ease with which she can wield sexual power over reason. Holy shit!” - Minnie has decided to lose her virginity. She’s an active character at every juncture. At is center, and in every scene, is Bel Powley, who plays precocious Minnie with a fierceness of expression beyond her years. This is what renders Heller’s film a definitive change of status quo. It instead embraces the intricacies of female sexuality, with all of its contradictions, emotions, and power struggles. “The way we treat boys is how we should be treating girls.”īut “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” doesn’t transpose the male coming-of-age story onto a female protagonist. “I just think it’s total bullshit,” said Heller. This can lead to low self-esteem and what Heller describes as damaging behavior. They’re going to see themselves through the eyes of men instead of seeing themselves for themselves.”Īs a consequence of affording young men this dominant role, limited representations in coming-of-age stories leave young women struggling to take ownership of their bourgeoning sexuality. They’re never going to be the ones getting to have their own experience. “They’re never going to be the ones with agency. “If we’re only reflecting what it is to be a young boy coming to terms with their sexuality, then girls are always going to be the objects of those stories,” said Heller. Heller saw a need to bring this perspective to the screen.
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What was singular and compelling about the graphic novel was its unadulterated perspective on female sexuality.
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In fact, Heller, who has a background in acting and playwriting, hadn’t thought of directing a movie at all until she encountered the graphic novel. “It hit me like a bolt of lightning,” Heller recounted. “When I was a teenager, I hadn’t realized how much I had been longing for a proper representation of what it felt like to be a teenage girl until I came across Phoebe’s book.” “You almost don’t realize you have a void until you find the thing that fills that void,” Heller told me last week.
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But it’s one that’s full of agency - Minnie’s - and it ultimately leads to self-discovery and power. It’s a messy journey, fraught with questionable decisions and the inevitable debasing situations that follow. Marielle Heller’s film, based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel of the same name, follows sixteen-year-old Minnie ( Bel Powley) on her journey of sexual awakening. This week, Sony Pictures Classics will release the most candid portrayal of female sexuality I’ve seen to date. By watching coming-of-age films, I learned to be everything that the empowered protagonist of “ The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is not. I learned that I was supposed to be a sylph-like creature: light, airy, hard to understand and even harder to catch. I learned that I was to be pursued if I wasn’t, I was simply not desirable. Like other young girls, I learned to view my sexuality through the male gaze. Where are the girls? They are, of course, the objects of the boys’ affection. You can find them striving to conquer their virginities, getting too drunk at house parties, test-driving their new cars or doing something in school hallways that’s vaguely recognizable as flirting. The coming-of-age canon is chock-full of teenage boys floundering in their newfound sexuality. Teenage girls are just as horny and confused about sex as teenage boys, but you wouldn’t know it from watching American movies. READ MORE: Watch: First Trailer for Sundance Breakout ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ Gets Honest About Female Sexuality