*** (out of ****)
Starring Holly Hunter, Evan Rachel Wood, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto, Deborah Kara Unger, Kip Pardue, and Sarah Clarke
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke & written by Hardwicke and Nikki Reed
2003
R 100 min
The logic of bad children essentially works like this:
Mom, accusingly: “I found [drugs/cigarettes/miscellaneous contraband] in your room today.”
Bad child, self-righteously: “Who said you could go into my room?!?”
“Thirteen” is the story of an intially Good Girl (Evan Rachel Wood) who is drawn into the world of the Bad Girl (Nikki Reed), seduced even, at that crucial age when conventional childhood ends and adolescence begins. Together they take up shoplifting, cigarettes, alcohol, clandestine body piercing, and fooling around with boys who still have braces. They also spend a whole lot of time shopping for jeans so tight they can barely move, and other clothes that will allow them to wear as little as possible. It is also the story of the Good Girl’s Mom (Holly Hunter), who is, in a way, too kind-hearted and sympathetic to put a stop to them.
Holly Hunter sure looks cooler than the average mom, but cool in that way that leads us to believe she must have made mistakes of her own as a teenager. She is divorced and works as a hair stylist out of her kitchen; although parents do not exist to their teenage daughters except as a nuisance, “Thirteen” is as much her story as theirs. About the only person her daughter hates more than Mom is Mom’s Boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto), a former jailbird, who is just now recovering from much of what the girls are eager to try. He looks upon the whole mess with sadness and resignation, and helps when he can.
Of the two girls, the Bad Girl certainly has more experience with self-destruction and is the initiator, but as a pair they are worse than they ever could be apart. We see them messing around with two boys from school, but they keep looking toward each other to see what to do next, to find out what’s interesting. The message is clear: they’re not genuinely old enough for boys yet. BG is carnal, manipulative, primal, and hungry, but not intentionally cruel for cruelty’s sake. It is the Good Girl who is vicious and hateful toward her Mom, at that age when mother’s can’t do anything without making their offspring angry. I love how GG is continously infuriated when Mom comes into her room uninvited, yet she never once treats Mom’s privacy with the same respect. BG is actually cunning enough to cultivate GG’s Mom’s affections as much as possible.
Dad, who lives a cleaner life in another state, pops up once or twice, surveys things, and moves on. He’s better with GG’s brother, who’s a good kid, but not with his wife or his daughter. We can almost not blame his cowardice around them. He sees them as hopeless and decides it’s just easier for him to scrap the thing and start over somewhere else.
With movies like “The Sixth Sense,” “Bend It Like Beckham,” “Panic Room,” “Better Luck Tomorrow,” and “Frailty,” child and teenage acting has increased in the last few years, in both quality and quantity. Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood can be added to this trend, both completely convincing when it comes to the outward coolness they display at school, and the intimate, yet always guarded and coded time they share together. As the Bad Girl (and as the movie’s co-writer, perhaps as a form of exorcism), Reed is always slippery and indirect. She looks Wood in the eye, yet layers everything with a teenager version of irony, and a street etiquette no less complex and ridiculous than the Victorians used. Wood is equally effective as a girl who we think is being corrupted, but who turns out to have been in trouble long before she meets her enabler.
“Thirteen” is Catherine Hardwicke’s debut as a director and co-writer. She directs with the visceral punch of an adventure film, or “Trainspotting,” with loud music, quick cutting, and perhaps a little too much shaky camera work, as we breathlessly watch two teenage girls make one bad decision after another. (My childhood and adolescence didn’t feel like an action movie at all, but more like a Mike Leigh film, with moments of Sergio Leone when things went well.) After working as the production designer on films such as “Vanilla Sky” and “Three Kings,” Hardwicke knows the value of good locations; GG’s house is a run-down, lived-in, shadowy-brown affair of cracking linoleum, where every surface is piled with old books and unopened mail. You can almost smell the mustiness, the old soup, and the un-coolness that must eat away at GG every second she’s there.
And the costume design—mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to wear those awful jeans. Skin-tight, pocketless, low-riding—they are like a character in themselves. The girls are too young for breasts, so their intended sex appeal is entirely heiny-centric. Early on, GG sees BG in a silhouette that inspires her with awe: but to me, in complete slut regalia, BG’s figure is little different than that of a toddler’s.
At the end of “Thirteen” I didn’t feel like I had ever really gotten into the heads of the two girls, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe the chief sensation of a girlhood out-of-control is careening from mistake to mistake at a breakneck pace, never sure why you’re doing anything, and unable to explain why afterwards.
Finished October 31, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
Back to home.