Double Feature: Youth In Exciting Times (Diary of a Teenage Girl & Acid Test)

There’s an old Chinese curse, “May you live in exciting times,” with the idea being that exciting times are turbulent, unstable, and often don’t end well for a lot of people. Being a teen during these periods of upheaval can be even more confusing and radical since kids (and now that I’m over 30, I consider everyone under the legal drinking age to be a kid) are still in the process of creating and understanding who they are so there’s a lot to disillusion and influence them. All of this begs the question: is there such a thing as a non-exciting time? 

Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)

So with that question in our minds, let’s talk about an era that most of us can agree was pretty turbulent: the seventies. Minnie (Bel Powley) lives in San Francisco at a time when the ‘peace and love’ vibes were starting to dissipate, while the sleazier aspects of a revolutionary tide were hanging around like barnacles. She lives with her mother Charlotte (played by a wonderfully manic Kristen Wigg) and little sister Gretel (Abigail Wait), where their laissez faire attitude towards discipline and rules is roughly equivalent to what one would find in a major city in 1976. Minnie is encouraged to go to a bar with Charlotte’s boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård at his charming slimiest), kicks a day of housecleaning off with snorts of coke, and no one bats an eye at a fifteen year old coming home at all hours of the night. Naturally, Minnie winds up in a variety of… ‘exciting’ situations. For lack of a better word. Upsetting might be a better one.

While Minnie explores herself, the city, and the seamier side of adult fun, a grimy and intriguing picture of the seventies is painted. Rarely is Minnie positioned as a helpless victim, which makes for a better story in my opinion, but we do see her at times where she’s over her head. Part of growing up is navigating situations like that and learning to spot warning signs before anything gets too heavy, and Diary of a Teenage Girl handles these scenes with an even-handed, realistic approach. When things go too far or Minnie ultimately decides she feels uncomfortable, there are no snarling caricatures and laughably unredeemable villains. This film is populated with half-broken people treading water and making plenty of bad choices.

Diary of a Teenage Girl is a coming-of-age odyssey based on a semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, which explains the realistically complicated approach it takes to unsavory behavior and experimental teens. The movie doesn’t demonize many characters and it provides Minnie with plenty of autonomy. Like many of us who grew of fascinated by drugs and sex, Minnie wants the experiences she’s seeking out, and this can put people in danger if they don’t keep their head on a swivel. Minnie is certainly bright and quick thinking so by the end of the film, she’s been able to set off on her voyage and return home relatively unscathed. Young people in exciting times don’t always fare so well.

Acid Test (2022)

Two decades later and the times are still pretty exciting. Acid Test is another semi-autobiographical film based on “the memories” of its writer and director Jenny Waldo. The movie opens with a title card saying “based on a true story” which then gets erased and replaced with “based on my memories.” It was a small touch I really appreciated, and in a moment when everything is claiming inspiration from true events yet the narratives aren’t matching said events, it’s nice to see someone acknowledge when it’s coming from their point of view and from what they can remember.

Jenny (Juliana Destefano) is a high-achieving and buttoned-up Latina teenager on the eve of her 18th birthday in 1992. The most thrilling part to her about her impending adulthood is the ability to vote, which is so adorable. She’s Harvard-bound and has a strained but affectionate relationship with her overbearing father Jack (Brian Thornton). He dismisses any of her comments about wanting to take a break before starting school and never lets up on her even when it seems like she is doing exactly what he wants. When she gets closer to a rich kid Owen (Reece Evert Ryan playing a guy I would find myself reluctantly in love with if we went to the same high school), he introduces her to acid and she finds her mind suitably blown.

What follows is a version of teen-hood and growing up that I saw more of myself in than something like Diary of a Teenage Girl. Acid Test is a slice of life movie fueled by the underground music of the time and Jenny’s drive for the future she wants; she is sometimes moody, sometimes wrong, sometimes right, sometimes right for the wrong reasons, and sometimes still a kid. She loses her virginity to Owen, argues with her parents, and in an angry night of being grounded drops acid at home and freaks herself and her parents out.

Side note: you got me on that one, girl. If I had just had a blow-out fight with my folks, sitting in my room on LSD would be my last option for entertainment. At the very least, I’d sneak the hell out, and before I started tripping, not after like you did.

Side side note: which reminds me of Conan O’Brien saying that when someone goes to Harvard, people respond to every stupid thing they do with the question, “and you went to Harvard?” Seeing someone who got accepted to Harvard start the sneaking out process while she was peaking on drugs made me want to ask that very question.

Anyway, I digress. Throughout the movie, politics is woven into conversation and background chatter. It’s the Bush-Clinton-Perot years and we see the start of our culture’s fragmentation, not just in the political realm but also in the world of entertainment. Jenny and her friends are attending shows where they thrash around to music that won’t necessarily be heard on the radio but will have a following. The discussion of the two-party system and how limited people’s voices are gets brought up in various ways. 

In a more personal way, we get to see how varied the lives are of the people in Jenny’s circle. One of the best scenes is between her friend Drea (Mai Le as a teen that is 17 going on world-weary 45 year old) where they compare their families, and Drea mentions that it feels like her and her mother are just surviving together. There’s so many small differences and similarities shared that we can see how 30 years later, we found ourselves in this funny no-man’s land of having common experiences yet varied and sometimes completely mismatched perspectives.