1/13/2024 0 Comments Diary of a teenage girlAbout halfway through this scene, I found myself counting the number of middle-aged men who had come to the movie alone, and wincing. The end result is to give Minnie more agency, something the filmmakers have stressed is tremendously important to them. In the movie, we see Minnie’s seduction of Monroe. In the book, we see Monroe’s grooming, coercion and molestation of Minnie. And when Monroe pulls away - in this version, Monroe is the one who pulls away - Minnie is the one who insists on touching his erection. Monroe does not grab Minnie’s breasts there in fact, Minnie makes the first move, sucking on his finger. At the bar, Minnie is lightly buzzed, not stumbling drunk. The breast-grab on the couch looks accidental. In the movie, all of these details are significantly changed. “I had that cold chill gripping my heart and my teeth started chattering like I was cold or scared,” Minnie says. ![]() Minnie says “I want you to fuck me.” Again, inner monologue is everything here: “I didn’t even know if I was serious but it was a funny game and I was totally drunk.” He decides she’s into it - because, of course, if you take a child, intoxicate her, molest her and eventually jam that child’s hand down your pants, you should feel very confident that informed consent can occur - and they drive home. He was saying “Oh look you’re giving me a hard-on oh look you’re givingmeahardon.” Then he put my hand down his pants but it didn’t feel too hard to me. He was feeling my tits but I kept interrupting him to stumble over to the ladies’ room. But you’re fifteen right now Jesus Christ”) and continues it at a bar, where he feeds her alcohol. In the book, Monroe starts everything by rubbing Minnie’s breast through her nightgown (“It makes you look like a little girl. Here’s where Diary the book and Diary the movie sharply diverge. And into all this swings the new father figure Monroe, instantly identifiable (to us) as a dirtbag, and instantly valuable (to Minnie) as the only adult in her life who is willing to pay her any kind of sustained attention. Sex is power, affection is unnatural, and boundaries don’t exist. Despite her occasional stabs at feminism, Charlotte’s main advice and guidance for her daughter is to wear sexier clothes: “You’ve got a kind of power. She doesn’t touch her daughter because her ex-husband (a controlling, short-tempered piece of work) found Minnie’s childhood desire for cuddling “sexual” and unnatural. Her mother, Charlotte, is an alcoholic who barely holds down her job, has rowdy drug-fueled parties with her friends while the kids are home, and occasionally cleans the house, if she’s on the good coke. The aching heart of the story is still there: Since her mother’s divorce, Minnie is living with essentially no adult supervision. Still, by removing some of what makes the book so excruciating, the movie also loses some of the political context that makes Diary such an important work. This may have been the only way to make Diary tolerable in movie form if it’s hard to deal with the words and hand-drawn pictures of the book, seeing real people act out these events could be unbearable. ![]() Marielle Heller’s film Diary of a Teenage Girl-which features amazing performances from Bel Powley as the 15-year-old Minnie, Alexander Skarsgård as the 35-year-old Monroe, and Kristen Wiig as Minnie’s mother - is getting rave reviews, with at least one publication calling it “ The Most Important Feminist Film of 2015.” It is also much brighter than Gloeckner’s book. Many in the movie try to take Minnie’s sexual curiosity and pleasure and warp it into something that renders her powerless, and passive.
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