Turns out that not all the Girls Gone Wild can be found pulling up their shirts on spring break in Cancun. Many of them, like the two Los Angeles teens growing up too fast in “Thirteen,” have yet to graduate junior high school. First-time director Catherine Hardwicke’s unflinching portrait of adolescence in this cold new millennium takes us to a place where girls play at being women, only the game is all too real and incomprehensibly (at least, for the girls) dangerous. It’s an emotionally-charged onslaught of a film that leaves no injurious stone untossed until the glass house in which it all plays out comes crashing down.
Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood in a stunning performance) is a good girl. Smart, outgoing and pretty — at 13, she’s every parent’s dream. Yet Tracy yearns to be something else: Popular. And in the new “Girl Culture,” popularity and overt sexuality shimmy hand in hand. Enter Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed, who co-wrote the script with Hardwicke), the undisputed “hottest chick in school” who wears hip-huggers, smokes cigarettes and generally behaves badly. After a quick wardrobe change, Tracy makes an almost effortless leap from geek to chic, and in the time it takes to toss her Barbie dolls in the trash she and new best pal Evie are stealing, dropping ecstasy and making it with older boys.
None of this sits very well with Tracy’s hard-working single mother, Mel (Holly Hunter). An alcoholic in recovery, Mel’s got her hands full trying to stay sober, pay the bills and sort out a relationship with her ex-addict boyfriend, Brady (Jeremy Sisto). Melanie’s always been good at being Tracy’s buddy, but she’s uncomfortable in the role of authority figure. By the time she realizes Tracy is in serious trouble, it may be too late for either of them to pull back from the edge. And when the street-smart, manipulative Evie — who turns out to be just a love-starved child — moves in with designs on becoming part of the family, it only intensifies Mel’s struggle to hang onto her daughter.
Shot with hand-held Super 16 cameras by ace cinematographer Elliot Davis (“Out of Sight,” “I Am Sam”), “Thirteen” looks and feels as frenzied as the high-octane emotional journeys its characters embark upon. This “commando-style” film-making enhances the rhythm of the raw performances, and brings us that much closer to the fire that threatens to devour Tracy, Evie and Mel. For her efforts, Hardwicke nabbed the top director’s prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. The former production deserves the accolades, for with “Thirteen” she’s orchestrated one of the most compelling films of the year. (Rated R for drug use, self-destructive violence, language and sexuality - all involving young teens. Running time: 100 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 29, 2003. Read the original PDF.