Bel Powley: Fake your ID to see my 18-certificate film about teen sex

Rex
Tom Teodorczuk7 August 2015
The Weekender

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The star of a new coming-of-age film with an 18 rating has urged teenage girls to “get a fake ID” so they can see it in the cinema.

Bel Powley, 23, appears in The Diary Of A Teenage Girl as 15-year-old Minnie, who embraces sex after losing her virginity to her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend.

She told the Standard she was upset that the British Board of Film Classification had given the film an 18 certificate. It was rated R in the US — which means minors can see it with an adult.

Powley, who was at the film’s Cinema Society New York premiere, said: “I was really disappointed. I assumed that the American rating would be higher than the English rating.

“But apparently it was a board of men [at the BBFC] that decided it and part of the problem we’re trying to show in this movie is that people are scared of teenage girls and teenage sexuality. They don’t want to admit that it exists.”

Asked what she would tell teenagers who wanted to see the film, which opens today, she said: “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!”

The actress, from Shepherd’s Bush, added: “Female sexuality and teenage girls isn’t something we want to talk about in movies, in books or even in life. 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.”

Phoebe Gloeckner, author of the graphic novel the film is based on, said of the 18 certificate: “I would compare it to having a film about the plight of blacks in the United States in the Forties and not letting blacks into the audience. These [teenage girls] are the people who are feeling these things.”

In its report, the BBFC says the film contains strong sex scenes, “strong verbal sex references” and more than 40 uses of the word “f***”.

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A spokeswoman for the BBFC dismissed the claim that only men had been present on the panel as “entirely incorrect” and said the decision to award the 18 certificate was due to the “frequency and detail” of the sex scenes.

She said: “We were aware of the context and content of the film and took that into account, but at the end of the day just because a film is about teenagers it doesn’t mean it’s suitable for them to watch.”

Alexander Skarsgård, who plays Minnie’s lover, also explained why he had dressed as a drag queen for the film’s West Coast premiere at The Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

He said his wig and gold dress were a tribute to the drag queens who worked on the film and the venue’s reputation as a drag queen haunt. He said: “It was the full Farrah Fawcett look. I didn’t hold back!”

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