‘The Diary Of A Teenage Girl’ Features The Best Performance That Didn’t Get Nominated For An Oscar

It’s not a huge surprise when tiny indie movies don’t end up getting nominated for Oscars. It’s a numbers game, and those numbers include things like box-office totals and marketing dollars, and the truth is that most indies don’t get the benefit of either of those things. Certainly not indies that deal with teenage sexuality in the provocative and funny ways that The Diary of a Teenage Girl does. This was a movie that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival a year ago and slowly picked up admirers through its decidedly modest summer theatrical run (it made $1.4 million in total). Now it’s available to rent or buy on VOD, however, so audiences who either didn’t hear about it or weren’t able to get to the theater to see it will be able to check out one of the best films of 2015, and one which features what I’ll happily call the best acting performance that wasn’t nominated for an Oscar this year.

Bel Powley was a virtual unknown before taking the lead role in Diary of a Teenage Girl. In many ways she still is. Previous to seeing the film, my only familiarity to her was her Broadway debut in the 2011 production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and frankly there wasn’t a ton about the performance to make me think she’d be somebody I’d tell people about seeing on stage years later. Happily, I’ve been proved wrong. Anybody paying attention to the indie landscape this year has surely tagged her as one to watch. She completely owns this movie, with the entire story being experienced through her character’s perspective. Minnie is a teenage girl (have you heard?) with all the awkwardness and questions and feelings and confusions that come along with it, and writer/director Marielle Heller is fearless when it comes to having all of those feelings suffused with sex, our culture’s great taboo/fascination. Heller and Powley are a great team, with Heller able to push boundaries because Powley’s able to take her there.

Watch Powley in this scene with Kristen Wiig as her mother, paired with what Heller and cinematographer Brandon Trost do with the soft sunlight in the kitchen. Wiig’s giving this kind of fractured, somewhat poisoned sermon, and Powley just drinks it in like a wide-eyed sunflower bending towards the light.

Minnie embarks on a sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend, explores things with a boy at school, comes to countless assumptions about sex and relationships, both correct and incorrect, and emerges wounded (though not scarred) and wiser (though far from having figured it all out).

In his review from Sundance last year, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy called Powley “one of those endlessly watchable performers who can look completely ordinary in one shot and captivating in the next.”

Scenes like the above one are where the movie really comes alive, with Powley’s empathetic performance working in concert with Heller’s creativity. If you’re expecting a dour, mumbly coming-of-age indie, this should hopefully be enough to turn you around.

You can rent or buy Diary of a Teenage Girl on Amazon Video.