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Evan Rachel Wood continues to make her bid to be the Jodie Foster of her generation in "Thirteen," a harrowing film about a good little girl gone horribly bad. Wood is Tracy, a seventh grader who lives with her single mom (Holly Hunter), a hairdresser who works out of the home. Tracy dreams of being cool, just like Evie (Nikki Reed), and when the opportunity comes to ingratiate herself with the cool girls, Tracy takes it and quickly moves from shoplifting, low-rise jeans and hoochie tops to drugs, body piercings, bad boys, oral sex, and worse. Evie even moves into Tracy's home, and it becomes clear that this is a troubled girl who has made shoplifting, drugs, and sex part of her daily routine.
The script for "Thirteen" was written in six days by director Catherine Hardwicke and Nikki Reed. Hardwicke had dated Reed's divorced dad and having known Nikki since she was a little girl was distressed when the kid turned 13 and starting having problems (problems like what happens to Tracy in this film). Hardwicke suggested Nikki keep a journal and intervened in the young girl's life, taking her to museums and exposing her to the larger world. However, it was Nikki's journey through the dark side that serves as the basis for this film.
The result is a story that retains its rawness even as we are mesmerized by the performances of the three female leads. For every "cool" scene, such as when Evie dressed for a date by taking off her skirt, moving her tank top down as a skirt and adding a new blouse, there are scenes that no kid is going to want to emulate, as when Tracy starts cutting herself. Meanwhile, her mother, a recovering alcoholic, finds herself helpless to do anything about her daughter's death spiral once she finally notices the radical changes that Tracy has undergone. It is not that Melanie does not care, but that she is powerless. Having been abandoned by her husband, Melanie finds her daughter has no use for her either.
The big question with "Thirteen" is whether young teenage girls who get to watch this deservedly R-rated film would understand that it was a warning or whether they would just filter the horror story through the prism of their adolescent notions of coolness. Hardwicke follows Tracy's descent but never buys into the idea it is a good thing. This is made clear by the opening scene where the two girls, while doing drugs, have made their faces numb so that they do not feel anything and starting hitting each other in the face, laughing hysterically all the time. The point of the opening scene is clear: Tracy does not know what she is doing to herself.
Hardwicke won the Director's Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Hunter is up for an Oscar, and Wood was nominated for a Golden Globe. "Entertainment Weekly" argued that Wood should receive serious consideration to become the youngest nominee the Best Actress Oscar in history and surprisingly that indeed happen this year, except that the nomination went to Keisha Castle-Hughes for "Whale Rider." Special mention should be made of Jeremy Sisto's performance as Brady, Melanie's boyfriend and another recovering alcoholic, who manages to play a pivotal role in the climax by providing the push Melanie needs to finally deal with Tracy. The "bad boyfriend" is a stereotypical role in so many films, that it is a shock to see one be different in such a subtle way.
"Thirteen" is a brutally honest film, the sort that you might never see again because once was enough, thank you very much. The emotional conclusion is powerful, but I would not say it qualifies as being truly cathartic. If there is a lesson here for parents it would simply be that when your children undergo radical transformations, of any type and in any direction, pay attention, because it could be too late sooner than you think.
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Thirteen
Well done film about an innocent girl entering the world of teendom. Confusion, temptation, crossing the line of good girl and bad and its excitement. Recommend!
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