Review
THIRTEEN
Starring Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter and Nikki Reed
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Opens Friday, September 19
Check listings
A moralistic cross between the work of Larry Clark (Bully, Kids) and an ABC Afterschool Special, Thirteen attempts to put the fear of Christina Aguilera into us. But if the film is really as realistic as its admirers are claiming it to be, not much has changed in 25 years.
I know that studies show the level of violent crime among teenage girls is increasing to a level that approximates that among boys, but the two girls in Thirteen are but a shadow of my own older sisters, who were among the most wayward teens in the town where we grew up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. If teens today are supposed to be so much worse than those in the past, why are those in Thirteen such lightweights? Is this just Bully lite?
I fear it is, although Thirteen does have a whiff of authenticity in that it is co-written by Nikki Reed, one of its two co-stars. The dialogue may ring true – and it adequately chronicles the adolescent rites of passage of many teenage girls, past and present – but the alarmist nature of the story is almost too cliché to bear. Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) is an awkward, sensitive girl who writes bad poetry in her spare time, but when she decides that the life of the mind is not as glamorous as being popular with boys, she goes out of her way to get in tight with Evie (Reed), the school hottie. Thirteen is so predictable it could almost be subtitled "How Good Girls Go Bad," and with Evie’s encouragement, Tracy soon descends into an abyss of defiance, alcoholism, drug abuse, shoplifting, ill-considered sexual encounters, anorexia, self-mutilation and so on, ad infinitum.
A list of the film’s themes reads like the subject index for the library’s young adult section: girls with poor self-image will seek attention from peers (particularly boys) when they are denied parental affection and guidance; families, no matter how dysfunctional, must support one another; parental addictions beget addictions in their children; and hormonal changes in adolescent girls cause them to engage in unthinkably self-destructive behaviour.
Granted, both Evie and Rachel are thoroughly believable teenagers – the former a manipulative combo of confident swagger and sensitive vulnerability, while the latter revels in the defiant hostility of the wallflower-cum-bad-girl. The scenes between these girls – their escapades and rivalries – are the glue that holds the film together. Together they reveal the yearning and disappointment of adolescence, as well as the quickly established loyalties and even hastier betrayals that fuel their emotional outbursts.
Holly Hunter also turns in an adequate performance as Mel, Tracy’s frazzled single mom, whose own disappointments in life are distracting her from acknowledging her daughter’s mounting problems.
This is where the resolution of Tracy’s situation smacks falsely. Mel’s sudden about face in the film’s final act suggests that she’s instantly become self-aware enough to be compassionate and empathetic towards her daughter. Why this happens in an otherwise realistic film is hard to say, but I believe it’s intended to give parents in the audience hope that their relationships with their own troubled teens can yet be salvaged.
Still, parents should be careful about drawing too many drastic conclusions from Thirteen. This is the sort of cautionary tale that, piling so many problems atop its protagonists, doesn’t really consider the depth of any of them. In comparison, take Larry Clark’s Bully, which is based on a true story about a group of Florida teens who murder a member of their clique. A genuinely alarming film if ever there was one, Bully shows its teens reacting to the amorality of contemporary American society, and thus is concerned with much larger themes and issues than Thirteen’s bourgeois lamentation for a non-existent adolescent innocence. |
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.