It's the same old story: lonely kid strives to be popular, starts running with the wrong crowd, alienates friends and family, reaches rock bottom, realizes error to ways. Every few years or so, someone needs to make this movie. John Hughes knew it. Todd Solondz tweaked it to great effect in his 1995 classic "Welcome to the Dollhouse". Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen" sets the bar younger than usual and rises above the standard After School Specials material largely due to the fact that Ms. Hardwicke wrote the script with an actual 13-year-old. If anything in the film is to be believed, young co-writer Nikki Reed, who also plays the "bad influence" Evie is having a very eventful childhood.
Things get bad pretty quickly in "Thirteen". Darling daughter Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) sets her sites on Evie and immediately begins to reinvent herself. She gets some piercings, does some drugs and starts generally behaving like Linda Blair without the green vomit. Single mom Melanie, herself dealing with being clean-and-sober, tries to approach the problem from all angles, but can't get through to her quickly-slipping-away daughter. Melanie is painfully alone: absentee ex-husband Travis lost his connection to Tracy long ago, on-again-off-again boyfriend Brady is tenuously off the wagon himself, and Evie's "guardian" Brooke (Deborah Unger) is too concerned with her own partying to pay attention. This leaves Melanie at the end of her rope, and it's Holly Hunter's performance that really propels the film. While the script allows Tracy and Evie to pretty much spiral out of control, Melanie's many attempts to reach her daughter provide the film's high points. Ms. Hunter, strikingly gaunt and beautiful, gives Melanie an aching desperation as she attempts to hold her family together. Her final scenes with Tracy are difficult and wonderfully played.
Thankfully, young Evan Rachel Wood is up to the challenge as Tracy. Giving a performance of natural depth and intelligence, Ms. Wood acts just as you'd expect from a 13-year-old; sometimes she makes perfect sense, and sometimes she's an illogical nightmare. As her partner in crime, Ms. Reed needs to do very little but play the devil on Tracy's shoulder. She does it well, but it was a wise decision to cast her in a role other than Tracy.
For her part, Ms. Hardwicke keeps the film moving at a brisk pace. From her work as Production Designer on "Three Kings", she has obviously learned how to give the film a gritty documentary style. The filmstock gets more and more washed out until there seems to be no more color left in the world. As a writer, Ms. Hardwicke has a good ear for dialogue, but she cuts away from some key scenes just as they get too intense. Thankfully, Ms. Hardwicke never goes the Larry Clark'xploitation route, but I would like to have seen the film go deeper. For all Tracy's mischief, she really doesn't do anything too terrible. I'm sure the film will shock some audiences, but I'm equally sure there's a lot worse going on out there. Films like this have to come along every so often to remind people of the mess the younger generation is living through. I don't think "Thirteen" is going to do much to change that. But, if we have to be reminded, this isn't such a bad way.
