Thirteen (2003)

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Starring Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto, Deborah Kara Unger, Brady Corbet, D. W. Moffett, Sarah Clarke, Kip Pardue, Charles Duckworth. [R]

All-too-believable story of thirteen-year-old Wood, an honors student and “good kid” who falls under the influence of popular wild child Reed and rebels under increasingly dramatic terms. The protagonist’s self-destructive exploration of angst is especially hard on her single mom (Hunter), who feels powerless—hesitant to intervene but unable to overlook. Depicted in gradual fragments over the course of several rocky months, Wood’s raw transformation never feels like a strain for shock value, even if Hardwicke’s notion of neorealist handheld camera aggression sometimes feels overheated (even the color saturation reflects the turbulence of the character’s confused, hormonal emotions). Hunter is especially persuasive and sympathetic as the clueless mom, a recovering alcoholic whose life was already hard enough before the awkward growing pains of adolescence hit her daughter like a Mack truck. Scripted by Hardwicke and young Reed, who based many of the film’s incidents on her own experiences (though in real life, she was in Wood’s shoes).

71/100