Review of 'Diary of a teenage girl'

This is a very powerful, and for me, rather disturbing film. It was made more disturbing by watching in the presence of two just-post-teenage girls, who were the daughters of friends from Australia that we thought we'd entertain by taking them to a film; the online reviews all suggested that this would be a comedy. Well, there are a few funny moments, but it's mainly painful to watch a young girl growing up among abusive and dysfunctional adults, having under-sex with her pot-head mother's pot-head boyfriend, giving blow-jobs to strangers she meets in bars because she thinks hookers are cool, and so on.

This is not your conventional coming of age film, and there are few tender and sensitive moments. It's raw and not pleasant - though, perhaps because it's contemporary Hollywood it has an implausible upbeat ending.