Raw and exuberant is the voice of Caitlin Moran, the seasoned journalist and author who penned both the screenplay for How To Build A Girl and the memoir that loosely inspired it. Therefore her coming-of-age story about a budding music journalist who can quote Ulysses but hasn’t listened to The Rolling Stones required an actress who is theatrical yet likeable; that can play the overachiever without seeming overbearing.
Enter Beanie Feldstein, stepping fresh off the back of her Booksmart breakthrough into her first proper lead role. It’s not hard to make the connection between Feldstein’s two characters; like Molly in Olivia Wilde’s modern teen movie, Johanna draws on the wisdom of pioneering women (her wall is plastered with photos of Elizabeth Taylor and the Brontë sisters) and daydreams about kissing unattainable boys (in this case Alfie Allen, commendably playing the rock star who really listens).
A resounding success as a showcase of Beanie Feldstein’s capabilities.
When writing as her authentic self fails to impress the all-male editorial team at a prestigious magazine, however, Johanna transforms into Dolly Wilde, her churlish alter-ego with cherry-red hair and a caustic tongue who proceeds to blaze an unrelenting trail across the ’90s music journo scene with headlines like “Eddie Vedder should do another rip-off of Kurt Cobain and just kill himself”.
Director Coky Giedroyc employs an occasionally skittish pace to keep up with Johanna’s externalised teen angst with all its door-slams and defiant monologues, which distracts from the story’s more poignant developments. For instance, Johanna belongs to a kind-hearted working-class family (led by a twinkling Paddy Considine), and the way in which she dissociates herself from them deserves more room to be explored against the privileged, misogynist music scene.
Yet Feldstein’s magnetism persists (even if her accent occasionally falters), and boosted by a well-assembled British cast delivers Moran’s affirming story of self-discovery with ebullient charm.
