|
THIRTEEN
5/10
USA 2003
: Catherine HARDWICKE : 100 mins
The early stretches
of thirteen are worryingly reminiscent of Lukas Moodysson’s
irretrievably awful Lilja
4-Ever. Both films fous on the travails of a bright but troubled
teenage girl; camerawork is hand-held, rough-edged, in-your-face and zoom-happy.
Even the narrative structure is very similar: after a brief prologue,
an on-screen caption flashes us back a few short months in order trace
the girl’s freefall into dire straits.
But whereas
Lilja 4-Ever (supposedly) tackled the grim subject of poverty-stricken
ex-Eastern-Bloc child-prostitution,
thirteen unfolds in the relatively affluent beachfront Los Angeles.
Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood, Pacino’s resourceful daughter in S1m0ne)
is an articulate 13-year-old living with her hippie-cool ‘mom’
Melanie (Holly Hunter) and surf-brat brother Mason (Brady Corbett) in
funky Venice Beach. Things aren’t perfect – Tracy’s relationship
with her seldom-seen dad is a source of unhappiness – but the family
gets along OK. Until, that is, Tracy’s adolescent development suddenly
clicks into a faster gear. Unsatisfied with her nicey-nicey friends, she
targets uber-cool classmate Evie (Nikki Reed) – a walking
‘bad influence’ if ever there was one (she’s like The
Craft’s Fairuza Balk). The pair start dabbling in all kinds of
forbidden-but-fun pastimes. Trouble rapidly ensues.
If thirteen
rings much more true than Lilja, that shouldn’t surprise
– while Moodysson shamelessly bragged about having done no research
prior to filming, thirteen couldn’t come from a much more
reliable source. The film’s co-star Reed (now 15) wrote the script
with longtime friend Hardwicke, basing it on her own experiences (according
to the writers, Evie is a composite). This explains how thirteen is
so strong on the turn-on-a-sixpence fickleness of trend-chasing teenage
girls, their speech-patterns (“I totally just stole this”),
the mercurial intensity of their emotions, their need for role-models
(“I love you, Christina Ricci!”), their casual cruelties, their
solipsisms, and raw insecurities – and also in its presentation of
Los Angeles as the ultimate dangerous playground for hedonistic youngsters.
Reed, Wood and Hunter make the most of their centre-stage moments, while
Deborah Kara Unger excels in her relatively brief appearances as Evie’s
apparently spaced-out guardian Brooke.
Despite all
these plusses, (and Lilja 4-Ever’s many flaws) thirteen
might have been a better movie if Moodysson (who’s excellent
with young actors) had directed it, just so long as he wasn’t allowed
any interference in the script. First-time director Hardwicke, who’s
as fond of crude zoom effects as the Swede, over-directs to an almost
unwatchable degree, deploying camerawork so wildly wayward you pity the
poor cinematographer Elliot Davis. The nadir comes during one of the film’s
many blazing domestic rows, when Hardwicke has the camera see-sawing left
and right – this is supposedly a kitchen floor we’re looking
at, not the deck of a listing pirate ship.
At such times
the film does feel rather like melodramatic, cautionary, dysfunctional-family
(i.e. absent-dad) TV-movie material on Alanis Morrissette-ish themes,
slickly scored with relentless teen mizak and tricked up with gimmicky
indie-grunge stylistics. Hardwicke may think her approach somehow mirrors
Tracy and Evie’s MTV-generation hyperkineticism. If so, she’s
all too successful: thirteen is like spending a couple of hours
(at least) locked in a small room with a pair of screeching teenagers.
By the time it’s over, you’ve learned a lot – but wonder
whether the price was really worth paying.
14th
November, 2003
(seen 30th October : Odeon West End, London – London
Film Festival)
click
here for a full list of films covered at the 2003 London Film Festival
by Neil
Young
-
|
