Beanie Feldstein Nails The Quirky Steampunk Girl Persona in ‘How to Build a Girl’

Most of us probably knew a girl like Beanie Feldstein in How To Build a Girl at one point or another. The new coming-of-age film from IFC—which released digitally today and is now available to purchase on-demand—finds Feldstein as a steampunk British teen writer who finds her voice at the expense of others. It’s not quite the role you might expect for the Booksmart actor, and the English accent does take a while to get used to. But slowly but surely, the character of Johanna Morrigan grows on you—even as she’s self-destructing left and right.

Based on the 2014 novel by Caitlin Moran—who loosely based the story on her early writing career and also wrote the script and directed by Coky Giedroyc, How to Build a Girl tells the story of Johanna Morrigan, a 16-year-old British girl who feels stuck in her life in Wolverhampton, England. It’s the ’90s, and her working-class family consists of 4 brothers, a mother suffering from post-partum depression (Sarah Solemani), and a father obsessed with a rock career that never happened (Paddy Considine). Johanna escapes the madness by daydreaming conversations with her favorite intellectual heroes, like Jo March (Sharon Horgan), Sylvia Plath (Lucy Punch), and Sigmund Freud (Michael Sheen). But it’s not enough.

She applies for a gig as a music critic at a local rock magazine. Her humorous review of “Tomorrow” from Annie gets her an interview; her moxie and her appeal to predatory men get her the job. She quickly falls in love with rock n’ roll—if not the music, then at least the lifestyle. She buys new clothes, dyes her hair, and rebrands herself as “Dolly Wilde.” When her gushy review of the dreamy rock star (Alfie Allen) she’s in love with nearly costs her job, she rebrands her personality, too. She pulls no punches in her reviews, declaring everyone’s music—from Pearl Jam to her own father—worthless drivel. (Never mind the fact that she’s only just learned about the genre a few months ago, and hasn’t even heard the Stone’s most famous album.) As she tells anyone who will listen: Being a bitch pays the rent.

Johanna Morrigan is not at all your typical coming-of-age character, especially when it comes to coming-of-age characters for young women. Sure, she’s bookish and romance obsessed. But she’s also dangerously self-destructive, depressingly narcissistic, and downright cruel at her worst. She’s deeply flawed in a way you don’t often see young women get to be on screen, but I’m willing to bet you’ve seen plenty of times in real life. Her over-the-top outfits—corsets, tutus, miniskirts, bridal dresses, fishnets, and an ever-present top-hat—act as an armor against the world, but it’s easy to see how insecure and lonely she is. When a crowd of musicians boos Johanna, and she cheerfully tells them, “Your hate is delicious,” I thought, I know you.

She’s not particularly someone you’d want to be friends with, but she’s endlessly watchable, especially in Feldstein’s hands. The 26-year-old actor hits all the right notes, and there are a lot of them, for a character as rich as this—innocence, bravado, heartbreak, anger, shame, neurosis, egomania… the list goes on. She, and the film, really hit their stride when Johanna gives over completely to the dark side, a place that finds Johanna accepting an award for biggest asshole of the year, and telling a heckler to “sit on his own goddamn face.” Honestly, I could watch Feldstein strut around in knee-high leather boots and yell at men for hours. For those scenes alone, Johanna Morrigan is an instantly iconic character that should have been in the pop culture lexicon years ago. As it is, I am glad she’s here now, and I’m glad it was Feldstein who ultimately brought her to life.

Where to watch How to Build a Girl