The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: August 7, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
34
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghAug 13, 2015
Marielle Heller’s debut directorial effort is incisive and universal, despite its very specific and detailed setting. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 26, 2015
The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the rare movie that presents the subject of the loss of virginity from the female perspective. Not only is the film unique in this regard, but also in its frankness, humor, and artistry. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 20, 2015
The heroine’s voice-overs, delivered into the microphone of a Bell & Howell tape recorder in Minnie’s bedroom, are the movie’s motor. They’re proud and insecure, profanely comic, dripping with adolescent wisdom and self-absorption. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanOct 2, 2015
You don’t often hear the adjective “uncomfortable” used as a compliment. But you’re seldom going to come across a movie that makes you as uncomfortable as The Diary of a Teenage Girl yet seems as true to life. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 13, 2015
Movies concerned with the life, the mind, the body and the dawning self-respect of a 15-year-old girl running every sort of risk — these are rare. The Diary of a Teenage Girl is one of them, and it's terrific. Read full review
80
EmpirePhil de SemlyenAug 3, 2015
Minnie’s inner life, a fantasia of animations appearing Crumb-like around her, is dazzling, and there’s plenty of naked emotion amid the sex, drugs and hand-drawn penises. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattAug 6, 2015
As unsettling as Marielle Heller’s feature-film debut can be — there are moments you’ll ache for Minnie and other ones where you’ll want to lock her away — it rings much truer than most coming-of-age stories. Read full review
91
HitfixGregory EllwoodAug 3, 2015
For all of Heller's impressive direction, she could have delivered something soulless without Powley's contributions. Read full review
91
IndieWireAnisha JhaveriJan 25, 2015
As told through Heller’s acutely sensitive vision, the result is less off-putting and more of an authentic insight into a perspective grossly underrepresented in American cinema. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesRebecca KeeganAug 6, 2015
A rare gem of a movie. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 4, 2015
The sex is explicit and frequent and pretty much covers the spectrum. The drug use that accompanies it cringe-worthy. No man could have ever gotten away with adapting Phoebe Gloeckner’s novel in such frank terms. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJordan HoffmanAug 5, 2015
Busy British newcomer Bel Powley is extraordinary as the teen finding her identity in mid-1970s San Francisco. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriAug 8, 2015
The first thing to know about The Diary of a Teenage Girl is that young British actress Powley is staggeringly good in it. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartAug 5, 2015
Debut director Marielle Heller’s spent a lot of time with this material — she wrote and starred in an off-Broadway adaptation — and her confident direction of Powley, Skarsgård and Wiig, fused with a Polaroid-evocative palette and a glam ’70s soundtrack, makes this an indelible coming-of-age story. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaAug 20, 2015
An honest and personal and unblurred examination (even through that druggy blur) of a tricky voyage into womanhood. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianJeff BakerAug 20, 2015
What it doesn't do -- and this is what makes this "Diary" different -- is let what happens define her or ruin her. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyAug 7, 2015
The result is a film that is funny and sad, scary and sweet, disturbing and revelatory. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 6, 2015
Powley is sensational, expertly blending hilarity and heartbreak. Her scenes with Wiig, sublime in her hard-won gravity, are unique and unforgettable. Just like the movie. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 13, 2015
It is not a pleasure to sit through, not even remotely, not even by some stretched definition of the word “pleasure.” It’s work, but it’s ultimately rewarding work. It tackles some truths that other movies wouldn’t touch, not even with a stick and thick gloves. Read full review
100
Screen DailyLee MarshallAug 3, 2015
It’s this adoption not only of Minnie’s point of view but the voice and narrative style of her half girlish, half womanly outlook on life that makes The Diary of a Teenage Girl such a vibrant, hopeful film. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineElise NakhnikianMar 14, 2015
True to its title, Marielle Heller's adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner's semi-autobiographical novel has the loosely structured, unfiltered feel of a young person's diary. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonAug 20, 2015
Films often fail to capture the turmoil of being a teenager — but not this one. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerAug 5, 2015
The movie’s dedication to girls everywhere is unnecessary; it already feels so specific and true without it. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Nathalie AtkinsonAug 17, 2015
That it’s unsettling not just because of the contentious moral context underlines just how radical any realistic depictions of female desire and sexual experience still are. Read full review
100
The GuardianLeslie FelperinJan 25, 2015
It’s morally complex and sometimes uncomfortably close to the bone, but also lushly bawdy and funny, and packaged together with an astonishing degree of cinematic brio by first-time writer-director Marielle Heller. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJan 25, 2015
A remarkably vibrant and frank look at one precocious teen’s emerging sexual life — a film with the stuff of life coursing through its veins and sex very much on its brain. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 6, 2015
The novel is life-specific, but what makes Minnie — on the page and now on the screen — greater than any one girl is how she tells her own story in her own soaringly alive voice. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJan 26, 2015
As uneven as it can be at times in its last fifteen minutes, Marielle Heller has crafted a super promising debut that evokes the idea of unlocking the secret world of teenage girls and letting us live inside the special little jewel box if ever so briefly. Read full review
80
The TelegraphHelen O'HaraAug 6, 2015
Young women have desires too, and the unsinkable, uninhibited Minnie finds that a little self-belief can make up for a lot of bad decisions. Read full review
90
TimeLisa SchwarzbaumAug 11, 2015
The result – believable, hopeful, tender, delightful – is a movie of (increasingly rare) truly indie sensibility, made by women who are confident about healthy feminine resilience. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeAug 3, 2015
What a ballsy film and honest too. Read full review
80
VarietyDennis HarveyJan 25, 2015
This adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s heavily autobiographical novel is ideally cast and skillfully handled. Read full review
90
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonAug 4, 2015
[Wiig's] great, but the film's in the pocket of Powley's rib-high corduroys from the second she struts onscreen — and long after she takes them off. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 13, 2015
One needn’t have first-person experience with, or even approve of, the extremes Minnie pursues to appreciate the honest, forthright way Heller and Powley present a journey that, stripped to its most basic emotional elements, is timeless and universal. Read full review
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