Anyone assuming this adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s illustrated novel is a slice of YA comfort food has a surprise in store. Tethered by another eye-catching turn from Brit Bel Powley, a show-stealer in A Royal Night Out, the sexual growing pains of ’Frisco teen Minnie are charted through a damaging affair with her mum’s boyfriend (Skarsgård), a detour through San Francisco’s free-love scene and quite a lot of floral wallpaper.
Minnie’s inner life, a fantasia of animations appearing Crumb-like around her, is dazzling, and there’s plenty of naked emotion amid the sex, drugs and hand-drawn penises.