Ready to Rent Ready to Rent (February 13, 2004)

Thirteen

Fox Home Video VHS & DVD 1 hr 40 min Director: Catherine Hardwicke

"When I was your age" should never be uttered by the two crazed protagonists of "Thirteen" lest their own children commit unspeakable atrocities. "Thirteen" presents teenagers at their most mythically monstrous, full of such malaise that it almost becomes a parody of every parent's worst nightmare. I remember when one of my friends, at age 13, stole three cigarettes from his mom and we lit up outside in the windy park. There was a feeling in the air that we had achieved something of a child's nirvana, with some distance from peering parental eyes but at the same time having the comfort of a home to stumble back to (feeling also a bit woozy and paranoid). Rebelling was never meant to hurt anyone else, it's just a way to expand the hovel of adolescence. Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen" amplifies these painful times when an adult personality begins to form and its enamel is sensitive to outside pressures.

In an especially disturbing beginning, Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) and her friend Evie (Nikki Reed, the film's autobiographical co-scriptwriter) are especially high, beating each other in the face while hysterically laughing, earning the "Every Parent's Worst Nightmare" award. This metaphor of destruction will be repeated again and again in the film. We cut back in time to a few months before Tracy met Evie, when Tracy still wore her child's persona. Tracy's best friend is her hip mother Mel (wonderful Holly Hunter), whose own life mistakes have deepened her openness with Tracy to the point of suffocation. It is Tracy's advancement into middle school, however, that begins her long, misplaced vying for adulthood. This bid comes in the form of Evie, whose openness with sexuality and drug use seem to beckon to Tracy as a personal dare. Soon Tracy and Evie are inseparable, sneaking out and partying. Most compelling is how Tracy confronts Mel time and again, drudging up old and painful memories as a defense against a mother that might have committed as many destructive acts as Tracy presently does.

It all winds up in tears of frustration, with some confused optimism for the future. All kidding aside, "Thirteen" did strike a familiar chord that I could not ignore. Many of my friends at that age shared similar problems to those suffered through by Tracy and Evie. Director Hardwicke, and especially Nikki Reed, present their characters with such immediate and intimate familiarity that the worn situations have a unique energy all their own. -Joe Ramirez

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