Diary Of a Teenage Girl has the most attention-grabbing opening line this year

REVIEW: “I had sex today!” In a matter of seconds, Diary Of a Teenage Girl has the field covered for the most attention-grabbing opening line of 2015.

Great role ... Bel Powley in a scene from film The Diary of a Teenage Girl.

Diary Of a Teenage Girl (MA15+)

Director: Marielle Heller (feature debut)

Starring: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgard, Kristen Wiig, Christopher Meloni, Abby Wait.

Rating: 4/5

A living libido, going loco

“I had sex today!”

In a matter of seconds, Diary Of a Teenage Girl has the field covered for the most attention-grabbing opening line of 2015.

However, this powerfully arresting and affecting adaptation of the book by Phoebe Gloeckner is only getting started with the many and varied provocations it has in store.

Our breathless, basking-in-the-afterglow narrator is 15 years old. Her name is Minnie (Bel Powley). She loves outsider art, alternative music, and logging her innermost thoughts on her trusty cassette recorder.

Nothing too out of the ordinary here so far, is there?

Perhaps we had better move straight to the matter of Minnie’s dreamy new boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard). He is 35 years old.

News_Image_File: On set ... Alexander Skarsgard and Bel Powley in Diary of a Teenage Girl.

Need some time to ponder the legal ramifications of the couple’s notable age difference? Then be sure to also ponder this: Monroe is supposed to be the boyfriend of Minnie’s mother, Charlotte (Kristen Wiig).

While the movie conspicuously backs off from judging its characters in any way, some viewers are understandably going to find it difficult to keep the same distance.

The fact that Diary of a Teenage Girl is set in 1976 San Francisco — a time and place where moral norms were somewhat more fluid than they are today — does assist in winning over any doubting onlookers.

However, if it was set any time inside the past two decades, things would be radically (maybe even unpalatably) different.

News_Image_File: Diary of a Teenage Girl . will make you laugh.

The story outlined here takes its cues from Minnie’s irregular taped confessions. Though not afraid to unburden herself of every intimate happening as her sexuality takes control of her life, Minnie struggles to achieve any insight into what is going on.

Just like cocaine-huffing Charlotte and the staunchly noncommittal Monroe, Minnie is a creature of impulse.

As perfectly played by Powley (aged 21 at the time of filming), she is a young woman about to learn the difference between going with the flow, and being swept away in a torrent.

In the wrong hands, Diary Of a Teenage Girl could easily have slid into a sleazy soap-opera mode, and probably sold many more tickets as a result.

Thankfully, first-time filmmaker Marielle Heller (a name to watch, just like the astonishing Powley) isn’t about to take any short cuts with a story that gets every detail right so it can stay the distance.