‘How To Build A Girl’ Is The Anti-Fairytale I Needed At 16

Being a teen girl is a weird space to occupy. It’s like being trapped in an unyielding vortex where you’re treated like an adult, and an infant in the same breath. Diana Sanchez’ How to Build A Girl is a story about one 16-year-old taking her destiny in her own hands. She does this in the face of fear, trepidation and the world telling her she’s not worthy of her own agency. Historically, girls have shouldered more responsibilities than boys both in and out of the household. Because of the sexualization of the female body and sexism– we’re often silenced, shoved to the side or locked away. How to Build A Girl is about self-liberation.

Set in the ’90s, the film is based on Caitlin Moran’s semiautobiographical novel and follows 16-year old Johanna Morrigan (Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein). Witty, imaginative and a bit boy crazy, Johanna longs to break free of her working-class English town, and her loving but dysfunctional family. With her gay brother/ best friend, Chris, her wanna-be rockstar dad, her school-age little brother, and her postpartum depressive mother whose recently given birth to twin boys, Johanna feels forgotten about.

She continually bullied at school, and she spends time daydreaming and writing. However, Johanna knows in her gut that she is destined to do more. It’s a self-assuredness that most teenage girls cling on to despite the world’s determination to stamp it out of them. Desperate to get out of Wolverhampton, and in need of money to help her family, Johanna applies to be a music writer for a London-based magazine.

It’s clear from the beginning that Johanna has a gift for the written word. However, she knows less than nothing about rock n’ roll. In addition to being a rock novice–Johanna has internalized every negative thing that has been said about her. Determined to be someone “better,” she reinvents herself into the vivacious and sometimes cruel, Dolly Wilde. The very opposite of Johanna–Dolly takes pleasure in cutting down others and being sexually insatiable.

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Image: Toronto International Film Festival.

Olivia Wilde Got Quite the Education With ‘Booksmart’

Genre popularity in cinema ebbs and flows with the time, but coming-of-age stories and romantic comedies have pulled in audiences throughout the decades. In her feature film debut, Booksmart, Olivia Wilde wanted to tell a new kind of coming-of-age story, one that centered Generation Z and female friendships. What she delivered was a thrilling and witty teen flick about our assumptions, that terrifying moment between adolescence and adulthood, and our true soul mates.

Booksmart follows senior class President Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and her bestie, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), obsessed with getting into good colleges, the pair have shunned fun and teenage whimsey for academic success. However, after an unsettling revelation that shows her she probably didn’t have to choose, Molly dives headfirst into an evening of balls-to-the-walls fun, and debauchery, dragging the reluctant Amy along for the ride. Booksmart is magnificent. Feldstein and Dever are hilarious and delightful–riffing off of their eclectic classmates. There is the terrifying rich girl, Gigi (Billie Lourd), the elusive Hope (Diana Silvers), Jared (Skyler Gisondo), who might be in love with Molly, and of course some weird ass theater kids (Austin Crute and Noah Galvin). A near home run of a debut feature, Wilde presents modern day versions of the kids you might have known during your high school days. However, in Booksmart she gives them room to play and expand on screen.

STYLECASTER was present at a recent screening of Booksmart where Wild and screenwriter Katie Silberman discussed why it was so important for them to tell this bold feminist story.

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