THE REAL TWEEN
Children shouldn’t be left to raise themselves. They shouldn’t have to raise their parents either.
Catherine Hardwicke’s new film “Thirteen” understands that sometimes children want to grow up so bad that they forget what’s good about being a kid; they forget that they are thirteen even though they could pass as much older. This film is a must see for parents and is one of the best films released this year.
Tracey (Evan Rachel Wood) is a pretty thirteen year old girl who feels the pinch of peer pressure—it’s nipping at her bellybutton. Her clothes and current friends just aren’t cool and her mother, Melanie (Holly Hunter), is a simmering basketcase walking the knife edge teetering on the brink of addiction. One day, Tracey has an encounter with Evie (Nikki Reed), the most popular girl in school. Evie is every mother’s nightmare, sexy and she knows it, curious in a
dangerous way.
After an unsatisfying encounter with Evie, Tracey wins Evie’s respect by stealing some money so the girls can go shopping. Soon Evie and Tracey are inseparable. Evie even moves in with Tracey sleeping in the same bed with her and taking liberties with Melanie’s trust. Evie is a fast girl with all the looks and plenty of street savvy to carry her over the rough times. She deals drugs using her sexuality to acquire whatever and whoever she wants.
“Thirteen” isn’t your typical kids out of control morality tale. No, this film smartly tells the story straight giving Nikki Reed enough screen time to create Oscar buzz. Painfully graphic, at times, showing blatant tween sexuality and drug use, “Thirteen” is less erotic and more enlightening showing the status of children left to govern themselves as their parents grapple with their own troubles, wants, and desires.
Holly Hunter is perfect as Tracey’s good-hearted but flawed mother, Melanie. Bad decisions are complicated by her character’s need to help those around her by giving into their wishes. Melanie’s children (Tracey has a brother) are unguided and her romantic energy is wasted on a struggling junkie (Jeremy Sisto). Hunter looks incredible, and in one unbridled scene, we come to realize how much she believes in the material presented in “Thirteen.” There is no doubt that Hunter smartly understood that this is a powerful film worthy of one of her best performances (which considering her wonderful list of roles is impressive).
Nikki Reed, who is given a co-writing credit, is extremely convincing as the manipulative Evie. She isn’t some throwaway tramp like, say, Drew Barrymore’s flirt Ivy in “Poison Ivy” but she is more akin to Reese Witherspoon’s saucy Vanessa Lutz in the underrated “Freeway.” Many teasing tweens have flitted across the screen but none more real than Reed’s Evie. Given the writing credit, you can almost see Reed’s influence on the material and her character in particular as though she were spelling it out for America: we are thirteen and we know what drugs are, we have an idea of sex that would make grown women wince and we don’t care about tomorrow, because that hasn’t even come yet, it’s tomorrow, and today is already forgotten.
The film looks sort of dirty having been shot on 16 mm. The look fits the material well following the children into dark places few of us could imagine going ourselves let alone permitting our children entry. At Slamdance this year, I saw a very good DV feature called “All Night Bodega” which, according to the director, employed the use of filters to “trick” the camera into looking more like film. That film too dealt with out of control tween girls. It wanted to look dirty. “Thirteen” feels and looks very personal.
After spending a few days at the enormous Dragoncon in Atlanta, Georgia (a convention that inhabits 2 major downtown hotels), I wondered aloud about the ages of some of the convention goers who went to great extremes to costume themselves in sexuality. Obvious tweens marched between the two host hotels wearing very little—clothing rolled and clipped, cut to reveal a ring piercing here, a tattoo there. I wondered if their parents were sitting up and waiting for them or if they had forgotten where their children were and who their children are.
“Thirteen” knows the real tween and wants to let others in on the secret.
Back to THIRTEEN
THIRTEEN