Bel Powley’s message to bypass cinema ratings: “Get a fake ID and go and see it”
Ratings and censorship boards often come under intense scrutiny for determining which films need cut and which are deemed unpalatable to a certain age group, forcing one actor to come up with an ingenious – and admittedly illegal – way to navigate the most diligent of ticket-takers.
At first glance, a literary adaptation that doubles as a coming-of-age story hardly sounds like something that would demand either an R-rating or an 18 certificate. However, The Diary of a Teenage Girl wasn’t exactly the typical tale of adolescence and romance designed to shine a light on the ups, downs, trials, and tribulations of the teenage experience.
Written and directed by Marielle Heller in her feature-length debut, Bel Powley stars as Minnie Goetze, a 15-year-old girl who becomes sexually active by starting an intimate relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. Complex and often uncomfortable, it was an unflinching and unvarnished look at a teenager’s first dalliances with sex and drugs, refusing to shy away from the highs and lows that come with it.
The BBFC was far from thrilled with what it saw, deciding to slap The Diary of a Teenage Girl with an 18 rating for many reasons, just one of which is “mechanical thrusting”. There are also “still pictures and short animated sequences” that include “the sight of penis, both erect and flaccid”. Heaven forbid the impressionable youth get their eyes on that sort of thing, but Powley had a novel suggestion of her own.
“I’m sure I’m not meant to say this, but try and see the movie, get a fake ID and go and see it,” she said, even if it probably wouldn’t have been too difficult for those in the protagonist’s age range to catch it anyway considering the percentage of people working in cinemas who actually demand identification for age-restricted films is almost surely a lot less than 100.
Still, the star wasn’t encouraging illegality for the sake of it, explaining how The Diary of a Teenage Girl has an important message to relay. “Female sexuality and teenage girls isn’t something we want to talk about in movies, in books, or even in life,” she continued. “It’s a taboo subject, and having been a teenage girl myself, it’s quite damaging. It makes you feel ostracised, like a freak for having sexual feelings.”
Heller was equally disappointed in the 18 rating, but she didn’t quite go so far as to instruct prospective paying customers to break the law in order to see it. Alienating so much of its intended demographic didn’t do The Diary of a Teenage Girl any favours at the box office, either, where it barely recouped its thrifty $2million budget despite being the recipient of wide-ranging acclaim.
