by JENNIFER MERIN
PHOTO/Sony Pictures Classics
The film is challenging, stimulating feminist cinema, the best of today’s openers. Be sure to also see “Ricki and the Flash” starring Meryl Streep, and the thriller “The Gift.” Skip the thriller “Dark Places” though.
Of the movies opening today, Aug. 7, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is the must-see, especially if you’re interested in challenging, stimulating feminist cinema. Based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s semi-autobiographical book/graphic novel, the film stars Bel Powley as Minnie, a free-spirited, artistic 15-year-old who chooses to have her first sexual experience with an older man (Alexander Skarsgard), who just happens to be her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend. But it’s the free-wheeling 1970s in San Francisco, and the film embraces the era’s liberal, borderline hedonistic, ambience without moralistic overtones. The result is a remarkably brave, unfiltered and compelling view – a guilt-free coming of age — from a girl’s perspective. Strongly performed and with fine cinematography, music and editing, the film was scripted and directed by actress Marielle Heller. It’s her first feature, and she’s already been signed to direct the highly anticipated Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic starring Natalie Portman. See this film, and you’ll be thinking and talking about it for weeks, I guarantee.
“Ricki and the Flash” stars Meryl Streep as a free-wheeling rock musician who, approaching middle age, decides it’s time to get to know the family she left behind when she hit the road seeking stardom. She finds those she left behind are totally dysfunctional, especially her daughter (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s daughter in real life), who is suicidal. The film’s comedic overtones are pushed by director Jonathan Demme, but this is not his finest work. Streep and the other characters – and their dialogue – are quirky in the slick and not entirely satisfactory style of screenwriter Diablo Cody. But Streep and Gummer are terrific, as always. They can make anything work – and do.
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