Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0026356, Thu, 13 Aug 2015 15:12:32 -0400

Subject
L & "L" sightings
Date
Body
*Lolita* and movie "Lolita" are mentioned (and discussed a bit or alluded
to in discussion of fiction, film, and acting) in this interview about film
and biography it's based on:

(I suggest relating this audio discussion and the works, genres, issues,
and lives discussed there, to films by Catherine Breillat, such as: Breillat,
Catherine (Director & Writer). *À ma soeur!* (Fat Girl or For My Sister).
CB Films. 2001. 93 min, Language French, ASIN: B0002V7O10, and some of her
earlier films, such as: Breillat, Catherine (Director & Writer). *36
fillette* (Virgin). CB Films. 1988. 88 min, DVD, Language French, ASIN:
1572525835 and Breillat, Catherine (Director & Writer). *Une vraie jeune
fille* (A Real Young Girl). Artédis. 1976. 93 min, Starring: Charlotte
Alexandra, Hiram Keller, Rita Maiden, Bruno Balp, Georges Guéret, Shirley
Stoler. DVD, ASIN: B00005RRJF, and her many other films,
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/catherine-breillat/filmography/, and also her
most recent film is terrific: Abuse of Weakness (2013) "Abus de faiblesse"
(original title) Unrated | 105 min | Drama | released 12 February 2014
(France) Director: Catherine Breillat Writer: Catherine Breillat Stars:
Isabelle Huppert ) ~


http://www.wnyc.org/story/a-diary-unlocked-a-teenage-coming-of-age-story-put-on-film/


Listen
STREAMS
WNYC 93.9 FM
Fresh Air <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/freshair/>
SCHEDULE <http://www.wnyc.org/schedule/?scheduleStation=wnyc-fm939>
OPTIONS
[image: Fresh Air]Fresh Air <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/freshair/>
Published in
Fresh Air <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/freshair/>
A 'Diary' Unlocked: A Teenage Coming-Of-Age Story Put On Film
Listen 38 min Queue

<http://www.wnyc.org/audio/help>
Share on Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=/story/a-diary-unlocked-a-teenage-coming-of-age-story-put-on-film/>
Share on Twitter
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?text=A%20%27Diary%27%20Unlocked:%20A%20Teenage%20Coming-Of-Age%20Story%20Put%20On%20Film%20&via=WNYC&url=/story/a-diary-unlocked-a-teenage-coming-of-age-story-put-on-film/>
Email a Friend
<?subject=A%20%27Diary%27%20Unlocked:%20A%20Teenage%20Coming-Of-Age%20Story%20Put%20On%20Film%20&body=/story/a-diary-unlocked-a-teenage-coming-of-age-story-put-on-film/>
Aug 13, 2015
From
<http://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/431997207/a-diary-unlocked-a-teenage-coming-of-age-story-put-on-film?ft=nprml&f=>

Graphic artist and professor Phoebe Gloeckner had an unconventional
upbringing. When she was 15, she lost her virginity to an older man — who
also happened to be her mother's boyfriend. Gloeckner chronicled the
experience in her teenage diaries, which she put aside and then revisited
when she found them decades later.

"I remember I opened the box with the diaries and I was just stunned to
start reading," Gloeckner tells*Fresh Air's* Terry Gross. "To hear this
child's voice, kind of, talking to me as an adult, it felt like it was
crying out to be heard."

In 2002, Gloeckner detailed the turmoil of her teenage years in the
semi-autobiographical graphic novel *The Diary of a Teenage Girl.* Eight
years later, actress Marielle Heller adapted the book and starred in a New
York theatrical production. More recently, she directed a movie version of
the work, with Bel Powley as a teenage girl named Minnie, and Kristen Wiig
as her mother.

Heller tells Gross that she felt an immediate connection to Gloeckner's
novel: "Even though this isn't my story — I wasn't a teenage girl who slept
with my mother's boyfriend — I was a sexual teenage girl and I was into
boys from a really young age. ... Reading Phoebe's book ... made me feel
less alone and like, oh, maybe this is normal, maybe this isn't such a
crazy thing to have been having all these thoughts and feelings."
------------------------------
Interview Highlights

On having a sexual relationship with her mother's boyfriend as a teenager

Phoebe Gloeckner: It was my first experience of any sort, the first person
I ever kissed. ... It is upsetting, and the book, to me, has a lot of
sadness, and it doesn't condone that relationship in the least. I think I
was such a lonely kid and the adults in my life were busy with their lives
in various ways and he kind of just stepped in and was paying a lot of
attention to me, and it turned into this other sort of attention. And I
think in my head I thought, "Gosh, he's such a great guy. If he's doing
this, maybe it's OK and maybe I just don't know."

On telling the story from Minnie's point of view, without judgment

Gloeckner: I was very, kind of, hyper-sexual and it felt very pleasant and
it did feel like love, it did feel like wonderful attention. So in that
sense, I look at the story and I'm trying to express the voice of that girl
with no judgment, just to express what she felt.

Marielle Heller: It felt like the way to honor Minnie's experience with the
film was to tell the story purely from her point of view. So while she's
experiencing that conflating of lust and love and that confusion whether
these first sexual experiences are consensual or not, I wanted the audience
to experience it the way she's experiencing it, and if she's not feeling
like a victim in those moments we shouldn't be feeling like she's a victim.
If she's finding empowerment in moments of it, then we wanted that to be
the experience of the film. Although I do think it's ... an abusive
situation and she's being taken advantage of, but it's being told so much
from her perspective, because I think a lot of situations, especially where
young women are being taken advantage of. What I thought was so beautiful
about what Phoebe had written is she kind of explained how you could fall
into this type of situation, and how that could've been almost any of us in
many ways.

On telling a therapist about her relationship when she was a teenager

Gloeckner: I went to a therapist, I guess I was sent there when I was 15. I
think the school wanted me to go, maybe my mother wanted me to go, because
I had been kicked out of several schools already and it wasn't clear why. I
told the therapist [about the sexual experience] and she was totally
freaked out, she was actually a therapist who dealt with childhood trauma
... so I thought she was going to help me, but she just said, "I've met
with your mother, I cannot talk to you anymore. I'm going to have to find
someone else for you to go to." She didn't report back to my mother, she
didn't tell my mother what was going on, she just kind of flipped out. I
remember feeling like, "This is too much for adults, they're not going to
want to hear it." I was kind of silenced just by the therapist telling me
she couldn't deal with it and not really explaining why.

On her mother's reaction when she found out

Gloeckner: I think she took it very personally that it was a personal blow,
we were hurting *her*. I think that was her initial reaction, which I think
a lot of people would have, there's a combination of shock and you don't
really realize or full integrate what's happened. ... She still maintains
that she was very betrayed by this.

Heller: She blamed you.

Gloeckner: She blamed me. ... I don't think she was really capable of
understanding how it affected me. She had been a teenage mother, she was
still very young, very beautiful, very involved in her social life, and
having a teenage girl in her life who was about the same age as she was
when she got pregnant and got married, I can only imagine that she looked
at me as something that was — she didn't know if I was adult or a child.
She didn't know how my life compared to hers. People constantly mistook us
as sisters. So no matter what she was feeling, there was reinforcement from
those around us, like "Big Phoebe and Little Phoebe, they're just two peas
in a pod, they're almost the same age." But it wasn't true. I was a child.

On casting Bel Powley as Minnie

Heller: In my mind, I kind of quantified the type of beauty I was looking
for as being something different than the sort of traditional "hottie" ...
young actress. I wanted somebody who was strikingly beautiful in a weird
way, in a way that she might not know how beautiful she was, but that it
was the type of beauty an older man would see and be drawn to, and that
maybe even boys her own age don't yet know how special she is, but there is
something there that is really amazing, and that you want to look at.

But I also wanted to cast somebody who felt like a real human being, that
never felt like they were this airbrushed Disney version of what a teenage
girl looks like. I wanted to feel like she was me — so she needed to be
little normal. She had to have a normal-ish body; she had to have
normal-ish features; she couldn't look like a model had stepped off a page.
And Bel had all of those qualities. She has these strikingly beautiful eyes
that draw you in, that tell you everything you need to know, which are
really similar to Phoebe's eyes — which are really similar to my eyes. In
some ways, we all have big, intense eyes, and Bel had this face that I just
wanted to look at.
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Post a Comment

http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-screen-diary-of-a-teenage-girl-packs-the-punch-of-a-good-graphic-novel/

Aug 13, 2015 · by David Edelstein
<http://www.wnyc.org/people/david-edelstein/>
From
<http://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432065489/on-screen-diary-of-a-teenage-girl-packs-the-punch-of-a-good-graphic-novel?ft=nprml&f=>
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Post a Comment

Fresh Air <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/freshair/>
RECENT EPISODES AND ARTICLES
On Screen, 'Diary Of A Teenage Girl' Packs The Punch Of A Good Graphic Novel
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-screen-diary-of-a-teenage-girl-packs-the-punch-of-a-good-graphic-novel/>Thursday,
August 13, 2015
The new film directed by Marielle Heller is a sexual coming-of-age story
about a 15- year-old girl who loses her virginity to her mother's
boyfriend. Critic David Edelstein has a review*.*
READ MORE
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-screen-diary-of-a-teenage-girl-packs-the-punch-of-a-good-graphic-novel/>

Listen <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/freshair/#>Add
<http://www.wnyc.org/shows/freshair/#>
Comment
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-screen-diary-of-a-teenage-girl-packs-the-punch-of-a-good-graphic-novel/#commentform>


Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L

Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
Attachment