Alexander Skarsgard on finding right tone in ‘Diary of a Teenage Girl’

“But as a girl you go, ‘F**k, what’s wrong with me?” It just happens to have a lot of sex in it. Minnie’s ability to see and speak the truth, to relate her story in text and graphic form, is her lifeline out of the darker corners in Gloeckner’s book, which include forays into prostitution, violence and heavy drug use.

Her sexual awakening centres on her affair with her mother’s boyfriend, played by Alexander Skarsgard. “I had sex today”, we hear Minnie say.

“Most movies would have spent the first 30 minutes getting to know the character before she had sex”, Heller says. A long intro would have only been there to satisfy screenwriting conventions and to coax audiences into the story.

The film may not be judgmental, but it isn’t without commentary – we see, for example, just how much the playfulness and soothing moments between infatuated lovers can resemble those of a parent-and-child relationship. Minnie’s heart races. Her thoughts are driven by sex and the known unknowns, and losing her virginity, and what lies in store for her.

It was a blessing then that Heller, a writer and actress, found a financier – worldwide production company Caviar – that gave her the freedom to execute her vision, even if it was on a shoestring budget with lots of help from friends and family.

The film relies on whimsical animation sequences by Icelandic artist Sara Gunnarsdttir to communicate the richness of Minnie’s inner world.

Director Marielle Heller took to the stage at the same premiere and introduced Skarsgard and costar Bel Powley; all three looked fabulous in their 1970’s dresses.

Now 23, British actor Powley had been sending tapes to the United States for years and hadn’t booked anything.

Minnie’s nominal high-school boyfriend Ricky is inept and bewildered at the idea of a girl there to do anything except service his entitled needs – as she flips him over and takes an active, assertive role to ensure her own sexual pleasure. She can dance and smooch with the rest of her raggle-taggled play pals, until she discovers her lover has been bedding her teenage daughter, and it’s heartbreaking.

“I felt that that was a way of really connecting him and Minnie, because I think if he’s a teenager himself, we can find moments where they’re actually just two teenagers that are in love.”

“People are scared of teenage girls and teenage sexuality”, Powley says. “I wanted to be part of this project which was going to potentially break that cycle”. Trust was essential. For a young woman of only 15, one who spends far too much time examining herself in a mirror, considering at length how ugly she is, this is a major life milestone. I have other things I want to do, so Marielle was such a genuine person with such a genuine love for the character that I decided I just needed to let her run with it, because it would be hard to imagine she would f*** it up. It is precisely this point of view that makes Monroe the object, not Minnie, and renders the movie a profoundly compassionate portrait of young female sexuality, rather than a cringey “Lolita” update. “We didn’t want to make a movie about a 15-year-old fu**ing a 35-year-old man”. Monroe and Minnie do the nasty behind Charlotte’s back. Tellingly, when she’s feeling most empowered by her newfound avidity and unruly appetites, she imagines herself as an Amazon, bestriding San Francisco like a monster of her own most audacious yet still tentative making.

Early in the movie, as she watches the Patty Hearst liberation news on TV, Charlotte feels empowered, and reflects the debate the movie itself provokes: Was Hearst in control of her circumstances, or a victim?

EDELSTEIN: It’s lucky that Minnie has this vision of Kominsky to talk to because apart from her likably nerdy little sister, Gretel, played by Abby Wait, everyone in her life focuses on Minnie’s increasingly sexualized body.

“A board of men decided that this movie was not suitable for young women”, Heller said. I wanted somebody who was strikingly attractive in a weird way, in a way that she might not know how handsome she was, but that it was the type of beauty an older man would see and be drawn to, and that maybe even boys her own age don’t yet know how special she is, but there is something there that is really incredible, and that you want to look at.