Written by Caitlan Moran
Directed by Coky Giedroyc
Starring Beanie Feldstein, Michael Sheen, Emma Thompson and Gemma Arterton
Running time: 1 hour and 42 minutes
MPAA rating: R for sexual content, language throughout and some teen drinking

by Emily Maesar

I first became aware of Caitlin Moran in 2011, when her book How to Be a Woman came out. She had written some children’s stories in the early 90s, but, as an American, her memoir was the first time I’d actually come into contact with her. However, she was quite well known in the UK leading up to that point, and continuing forward after it.

A few years later, she published How to Build a Girl, a fictionalized, pseudo-realistic story about a girl in the 80s who becomes a music journalist at 16. The film adaptation of that novel is loud, feminist and a lovely twist on a classic coming-of-age story. 

Directed by Coky Giedroyc with a script by Moran, the film stars Beanie Feldstein as Johanna. From a working-class family in England, Johanna is unclear what to do with herself. She wants to be popular. She wants to have sex. And she wants to be a writer.

When she gets invited to read one of her poems on national television… it goes poorly, to say the least. Embarrassed, her brother suggests she apply for writing jobs that aren’t poetry and gives her an ad to be a writer for a music magazine. She submits a review for a song from the musical Annie, and the guys who publish the magazine have to meet her, mostly because they can’t believe she’s real. With some persistence and a little bit of help, though, she ends up with her first gig to cover, and we’re off to the races.

Feldstein is magnetic, which is unsurprising. She’s been killing the game since she showed up in Lady Bird a few years back and is proving time, and time again, that she’s a leading lady. I have no idea if her accent is actually any good, but it hardly matters to how much I enjoyed her performance.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Alfie Allen - he’s spellbinding as hell in this film. He’s not in very much of it, but I’ve been waiting for a role like this for him. It was refreshing to see him in something vaguely modern with all his charm intact. Also, what’s Laurie Kynaston been up to, because his role as her brother Krissi is amazing. He does so much with a story that’s not about him. 

There’s also something powerful to be said that this film is written and directed by women. A nice put up or shut up kind of dynamic that a lot of coming-of-age stories about girls and women just don’t get afforded, until recently. And I’ll stop talking about it, when it stops being cool as hell.

Director Coky Giedroyc has been mostly working on television in the last twenty years, the length of time since her last feature film, but the time away has only made her filmmaking sharper. The pacing feels out of control, but in that measured way that a teenage life often does. 

Moran joins a long list of women who’ve been the ones to adapt their own books for screen (she’s sitting pretty with Gillian Flynn and Emma Donoghue, not a bad crowd to be in). While I don’t think she’ll end up with an Oscar nomination, or be counted in the snubs category, it’s a gripping adaptation of both her work and what we can assume was her life. 

How to Build a Girl is fun. It’s wild. It’s empowering. For all the teenagers (or former teenagers) who wished they could remake themselves in a new image, Johanna Morrigan gives us a new way. 

Opens Friday, May 8th at drive-ins, on cable and digital VOD.