The Creeps: Part II

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (A) -  A triumph of period filmmaking, this story of a 15-year-old girl in 1975 San Francisco sleeping with her mother's boyfriend is as authentic as feature films get.

The debut of 35-year-old Marielle Heller -- that's right, she wasn't born in 1975 -- is a marvel of a coming-of-age tale, but it greatly exceeds that genre classification. The mesmerizing Brit Bel Powley (that's right, she's not from the Bay Area) stars as the antsy teen Minnie, who yearns for the love, attention and touch of a man. She falls for Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard from TV's "True Blood"), the porn-stached beau of her free-spirited mother, Charlotte (the always interesting Kristen Wiig). 

Charlotte has a pal (Miranda Bailey) to drink and do lines of coke with, and Minnie also has a co-conspirator, the rascally Kimmie (the sharp Madeleine Waters, in her debut), and they all have their share of debauched adventures. Minnie and Kimmie navigate the transition between being girls (they jump and sing on Minnie's bed in front of an Iggy Pop poster) and young women (they have a romp in a bar pretending to be prostitutes).

In fact, Heller expertly conveys the feelings and emotions of both a wide-eyed 15-year-old girl and a jaded 35-year-old woman. Writing the script with source novelist Phoebe Gloeckner, Heller re-creates the look and feel of the 1970s without precious filmmaking fussiness or Hollywood conceit. From the opening moments, the story feels natural and real. Few films have captured post-Watergate urban America so well. This movie could have been made in 1975.

But the newcomer has an impeccable eye and ear for not only the era but also for the fundamental female experience. Her star, Powley, with her huge eyes, pouty lips and sexy curves (she's in her early 20s) embodies the adolescent bursting with hormones and pent-up affection. None of this feels like exploitation. The relationship between Minnie and Monroe has substance to it; it helps that this takes place during a more permissive time. But even so, Minnie doesn't seem like a victim, and nor is she a predatory vixen. Instead, Heller presents a compelling human drama, shaded with character studies and nuance. Wiig as Charlotte takes what could have been a thankless role and uses her physical grace to add dimension to the character. Christopher Meloni finds the right edge as the insufferably snooty Pascal, Charlotte's ex and the biological father to Minnie's snoopy little sister, Gretel.

This is anything but a downer; it has heart, snap and whimsy. Minnie is a budding cartoonist in the style of R. Crumb. While she sketches, she imagines communicating with Crumb's wife, Aline Kominsky, who appears in cartoon form (voiced by Susannah Schulman). (Heller keeps her footing even with animation and twinges of magical realism; it's a magic touch.) The comic-book setting recalls "Ghost World" (with its nubile teens Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) and "American Splendor."

There is nothing like, in the summer of 2015, flashing back 40 years to a sloppy analog time when the world seemed like it was unraveling but anything still seemed possible. What a feat to capture that.