The Diary of a Teenage Girl

3 out of 4 Stars

It's San Francisco, 1976. As the city shifts from the pot-fueled hippie idealism of the late-Sixties to the coke-snorting excess and sexual promiscuity of the disco era, 15 year old Minnie Goetz enters womanhood as if it were a baptism by fire. Based on Phoebe Gloeckner's semi-autobiographical graphic novel, The Diary of a Teenage Girl follows Minnie (Bel Powley) going through a gauntlet of sex, drugs, and comic books as the aspiring young cartoonist loses her virginity to her mother's boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård)leading to  a tumultuous affair. Minnie's sexual awakening leads to an array of encounters with men and women causing her freewheeling, yet sedated, mother (Kristen Wiig) and estranged stepfather (Christopher Meloni) to suspect their daughter's sudden transformation.


The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a frank and daring film that looks at the celebration and chaos of a young woman's budding sexuality. Unlike previous films about teenagers indulging in their sexual and excessive appetites- such as the immature American Pie or the scared-straight realism of Thirteen- the film walks the fine line at acknowledging teenage angst and sexuality without becoming exploitative. The sexual activity on the screen may cause some controversy, but it is tame compared to Minnie's highly-detailed sexual exploits in the book. However, the film succeeds in showing the active sex life of a teenage girl as opposed to the majority of films featuring horny young men keen on losing their virginity.

Bel Powley, the 22 year old British actress, gives a remarkable performance as Minnie as she walks the fine line between sexual confidence and emotional vulnerability. Alexander Skarsgård gives a moderately good performance as the perverted and manipulative Monroe that rings similar tones to Peter Sarsgaard's performance as the domineering Chuck Trainor in Lovelace. Kristen Wigg adds another successful performance under her belt as a depressed and inebriated matriarch trying to find love and raise her two daughters at the same time. Despite being on screen for ten minutes, Christopher Meloni managed to use every minute to his advantage playing an academic who pines for her two daughters and a stable family life. 

Marielle Heller, who starred and produced an Off-Broadway version of The Diary of a Teenage Girl years ago, succeeds in making her directorial debut a faithful and audacious adaptation of Gloeckner's raw tale of relationships and growing up. She manages to capture the anything-goes attitude and drug-fueled turbulence of mid-1970s San Francisco by combining live action with Sara Gunnarsdottir's animated sequences. Even though the film could have gone an extra mile in delving deeper into the original text, The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a candid and moving film about the perils of adolescence and adulthood

4K Gold: The Third Man

In the seven years since I have worked on this blog, I’ve rarely talked about the films of the past since I’ve only talked about what’s currently in theaters. Last week, I went and saw a 4K restored version of Carol Reed’s 1948 classic film noir, The Third Man. It’s an extraordinary film that has not aged in terms of Graeme Greene’s brilliant screenplay, Robert Krasker’s cinematography, and Anton Karas’ beautiful, yet chilling, score on the Zephyr. I’ve seen the film five times and introduced it to my film students while I was working as a student-instructor in New Hampshire and it still manages to pack a punch 67 years later. 

For those of you not familiar with the film, Joseph Cotton plays Holly Martins, a down-on-his-luck pulp novelist who goes to Postwar Vienna to work at an unknown job for his childhood friend, Harry Lime. As soon as Holly gets into town, his estranged friend is fatally struck by a car. Trevor Howard plays Calloway, a British military police officer, who convinces Holly that Lime was a criminal and that he should be left as dead.  As Martin’s tries to find his friend’s assailant, the story unravels into deception and greed leading to a suspenseful conclusion within the sewers of Vienna. 

At the forefront of The Third Man is Orson Wells’ performance as the illusive Harry Lime. It has been argued that Wells played significant role in the production of the film and it’s hard not to refute that argument. Carol Reed must have had Citizen Kane on his mind when he decided to shoot The Third Man from tilted angles and from the floor up to the ceiling as Wells did with his director of photography, Gregg Toland. Also, like Wells’ Charles Foster Kane, Harry Lime is an opportunist who wants something more than wealth and companionship; power. 

The Third Man remains a canonical film within the film-noir genre. It’s hard to imagine films like Sunset Blvd. or Chinatown being made had it not been for The Third Man hovering over Billy Wilder and Robert Towne as a source of inspiration. Even Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film, The Departed, pays homage to The Third Man and its chilling ending as Alida Valli walks past the camera before the credits roll. Currently, The Third Man is being shown in selected theaters in the United States and is soon to be released by Studio-Canal on DVD and Blu-Ray. Next to the cuckoo clock, The Third Man is one of the most celebrated works to come out of Vienna.                 

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

3 1/2 out of 4 Stars

One of the few comedies this summer that deals with mortality, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is hilariously disturbing and disturbingly hilarious. His third film in his cycle of death trilogy, Andersson builds on the humor and absurdity of everyday life like in his previous films (Songs from the Second Floor and You, The Living) by filming 39 vignettes capturing the bleak and funny aspects surrounding monotony and death. If there is a plot in this film, it focuses in and out on two depressed joke shop salesmen (Holger Andersson and Niles Westblom) with such irony and morbid humor reminiscent of characters in a Coen Brothers film. The plot is diverted by Andersson's surrealist visions of singing barmaids, 19th century soldiers taking over a local watering hole, and death by wine bottles. Winner of the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is as thought-provoking as it is provocatively funny.

In interviews leading up to the film's release, Andersson said that he was inspired by De Sica's Bicycle Thieves while making the movie. The only reference to the film is seeing a cyclist on screen for three minutes. Apart from that, Andersson tips his hat towards the evocative imagery of Luis Bunuel and Terry Gilliam as he captures chaos of industrialist Sweden with static camera shots focusing on the offbeat nature of everyday life. Like Todd Solondz's films, Andersson's morbid humor leaves you embarrassed to laugh at some of the film's most uncomfortable scenes, such as a colonialist army whipping slaves into a revolving furnace or a dying matriarch unable to grasp the concept of "you can't take it with you."            

The humor of Andersson's film is accentuated by the polka and waltz-fueled score by Hani Jazzar and Gorm Sundberg. However, the humor is not as consistent as his 2007 masterpiece, You, The Living. All and all, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is another bold attempt by Andersson to capture death with a macabre sense of humor with a distinctive vision that is as beautiful as it is haunting.