Making things tough for herself

THERE'S a perfectly good reason why Carrie Pilby (Bel Powley) doesn't have any friends: she has an aversion to other members of the human race. At 19, already graduated from Harvard - having enrolled as a 14-year-old prodigy - she's taken a different path from her peers and can't be easily pigeonholed. Grouchy, opinionated and somewhat bratty, with a penchant for alienating others, the only time she speaks to strangers is when she says: "Table for one, please."

Carrie Pilby, a coming-of-age tale directed by Susan Johnson and adapted by Kara Holden from a novel for young adults by Caren Lissner, attempts to bottle some of the magic from Diary of a Teenage Girl (2016), which also starred Powley. The results are less interesting this time around.

Like others of her generation, Carrie has daddy issues and regular sessions with a therapist: Dr Petrov (Nathan Lane) is a family friend who provides emotional support and gives her a to-do list that includes such tasks as "meet people", "get a pet" and "begin a meaningful relationship".