Kristen Wiig's 'The Diary of a Teenage Girl' Receives Severe British Rating vs. MPAA

Kristen Wiig's The Diary of a Teenage Girl has received a brutal rating in Britain due to the mature subject matter. The British Board of Film Classification said that anyone younger than 18 years of age would not be admitted even if they are accompanied by an adult. Entertainment Weekly reports, "In contrast, the Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. ratings board, handed an R-rating out to the film, meaning minors are permitted to see the film if they are accompanied by an adult." The author of the novel on which the movie is based, Marielle Heller, says that she wasn't surprised that the film got an R-rating and that "We worked very closely with the MPAA in order to get that rating. I was pleased with that rating."

According to IMDB, the film follows "a teen artist [named Minnie] living in the 1970s San Francisco [and] enters into an affair with her mother's boyfriend." Newcomer Bel Powley plays the young artist who keeps a diary via recording and tries to keep her private life, including her affair with Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard), a secret. Wiig plays her mother, Christopher Meloni (Law and Order: SVU) plays Minnie's dad and Margarita Levieva (Lincoln Lawyer and Adventureland) plays Tabatha. The film was a record smash at the Sundance Film Festival, based on the book by Heller. The film focuses on sexual awakening and how this particular character deals with her "transformation" and "the power she has."  According to the Hollywood Reporter's review of the film, "Heller herself put forth a lot of effort when it came to adapting the story to the screen, "Having staged and performed the work beforehand was necessarily of enormous benefit in terms of Heller's focus on how to transform the material for different media. Her self-assurance behind the camera is evident in every scene, as it is in her presentation of Minnie through Powley, a British actress obviously without inhibitions, who is entirely winning in her first film to hit the big screen."

The Diary of a Teenage Girl hits theaters August 7th and you can check out the trailer here!