Thirteen (2003)

THIRTEEN
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth

*** (out of ****)

Forget "Freddy vs. Jason." If you have a teenage daughter, or a daughter fast approaching her teen years, then the scariest film out there right now is Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen."

The film plays like a reality check for parents, a slap upside the head to those who assume their daughters don't even think about (let alone do) the kinds of stuff the kids in "Thirteen" are doing (like half the teenagers out there talking about this film). It's what every parent wants to believe, of course, but it's foolish to dismiss the persuasive power of peer pressure. That, plus modern-day lifestyles tend to dictate that our young women are often left to fend for themselves, unsupervised, for many hours at a stretch. That can spell danger, Will Robinson (to quote one of the characters in the film).

"Thirteen" spins the cautionary tale of Tracy (played by Evan Rachel Wood), your average seventh-grader who's desperate to fit in. Early in the film, Tracy hooks up with Evie (Nikki Reed, who co-wrote the film with director Hardwicke), the coolest--and hottest--girl in school. After proving herself by stealing a woman's purse at a bus stop on Melrose, Tracy is taken under Evie's wing, a pairing that quickly leads to drinking, sexing, and body piercing, to name a few very un-PG-13 rated "ings." (The film is rated R so see it together with your kid, not separately).

Tracy's mother, Mel (a terrific Holly Hunter), at first barely notices. A recovering alcoholic who runs a hairdressing business out of the their L.A. home, Mel struggles to keep her family together. (She's divorced, and her unreliable ex-husband is hardly ever there for Tracy and her brother, Mason, even during the easy stuff.) Tracy is not a fan of her mother's live-in boyfriend, Brady (Jeremy Sisto of "Six Feet Under"), whom she dubs a crackhead, so there's tension and then some around the place.

Production Designer Hardwicke, who sports an impressive filmography that includes such diverse films as "Laurel Canyon," "Three Kings," and "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," makes her directorial debut with this film. It's an accomplished effort, with camerawork often matching the fractured, dizzying lifestyle of its MTV-influenced subjects. Oftentimes Hardwicke stages her shots so that you believe one thing until she pulls back to reveal another. The performances are uniformly solid, with Wood notable in the lead. (Until now she's only had small roles in films like "Practical Magic" and "Simone.") Over the course of the film, Tracy devolves from a responsible yet naïve young woman with good grades to a self-destructive, hard-edged player. It's a tall order for anyone to pull off convincingly, yet Wood is up to the challenge.

The typically fine Hunter once again contributes a performance of amazing depth. As Frances McDormand said in a recent interview, "In the future they'll start writing parts for 50-year-old women and me and Holly Hunter will do all of them." I sure hope so. Hunter is a complex actress who continues to accept interesting and challenging assignments. Deborah Kara Unger, who teamed with Hunter on David Cronenberg's "Crash" (case in point), plays Evie's life-addled guardian Brooke.

Concerned parents might not take much comfort from the film (especially since it focuses almost exclusively on Tracy's downward spiral), but they should certainly take notice. She's thirteen, remember. Do you know where your daughter is?

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David N. Butterworth
dnb@dca.net

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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1194230
X-RT-TitleID: 1124997
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X-RT-RatingText: 3/4