But in the book, she doesn’t do that, and he takes her hand and puts it down his pants. For someone who doesn’t know anything about sex… she kind of seems to know something about sex. And at this point, she’s a virgin and she’s 15 years old, and it’s this kind of knowing thing that she does.
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There’s this scene in the movie where Minnie sucks on Monroe’s finger in a bar. The movie paints her more as the aggressor, but I think it’s far more subtle in the book.
She’s kind of putting it in the hands of Monroe, her mom’s boyfriend. She’s still confused, she doesn’t even know if it’s right or wrong. And she doesn’t have the ability to see it from the outside.
She’s a teenager, of course she’s going to feel that. The question in that sense is: What if it had been a more age-appropriate relationship or, in terms of the family, a more appropriate person that she was involved with? She probably would have experienced that same elation. But I think that - if I had made the movie, it probably would not have been as popular as this seems to be, in terms of independent films. It just goes a few other places that the movie doesn’t really go. So in that sense, the film is not so different in terms of the story arc. So it would have been more like the book, but the book has a happy ending, too. She is a teenager, and the joy and the pain are, they’re almost like manic-depressives, teens. I guess what I didn’t add is, Minnie would have been equally joyful, but it would have gone a little more deeply into the darker areas of the story. She kicks off the movie with this voiceover of: “I had sex today. There’s this real exuberance to Minnie, even though what’s happening to her is dark. Which was interesting to hear because, tonally, it’s not a super-dark movie.
You’ve said that, if you made the movie, it would have been much darker, that it would have hurt to watch. I had to see it twice, because I couldn’t even grasp what it meant to me, or even, I couldn’t judge it. And since then, I was on the set of the movie and my kids were involved in one way or another in the production, so when I finally saw the movie, I guess I was just stunned. The first time I saw that, I just wanted to cry. I think it started a long time ago when M produced a play. I would say that, seeing the actual movie was not the pinnacle of that strangeness. I spoke with Gloeckner about watching her story depicted in film, complicated mother-daughter relationships, and why it’s so rare to see girls like Minnie in the movies. Diary invites us to see Minnie the way she sees herself. So many movies show teenage girls as men see them, as objects of someone else’s desire instead of agents of their own. And that might be the best thing about Diary, how it takes a story we think we know - older man seduces innocent girl-child - and holds it up to the light for a closer examination, allowing that someone inside that experience can have a valid interpretation of those facts that doesn’t align with our expectations. Monroe is a predator, but Minnie doesn’t see herself as a victim - at least, this girl who regularly asserts that she is “a fucking woman” would be insulted to hear anyone categorize her that way. But Diary allows that Minnie can be on the prowl for a multitude of things at once, that she can want sex as in end unto itself, or that she can really be wanting attention, or love, or to be wanted. Minnie gets the coming-of-age treatment so rarely offered to girls in movies: She has sex, she likes it, and whatever the fallout is - and, as you can imagine considering the circumstances, there is considerable fallout - it doesn’t leave her wrecked. Diary was adapted by Marielle Heller, in 2010, as a play Heller directs the movie version, in theaters now. And that he is Minnie’s mother’s boyfriend.ĭiary is based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s 2002 graphic novel of the same name, which in turn is based largely on Gloeckner’s own life. Holy shit.”Ī few minutes later, we find out that the man with whom she had sex, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard), is much older than she is. Fifteen-year-old Minnie (Bel Powley), spring in her stride, tells us in a voiceover that she just lost her virginity. The Diary of a Teenage Girl starts with a triumph.