'Thirteen' proves a really tough age

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 5, 2003 at midnight

Text size

More Movies

To call Tracy a handful would be to underestimate her capacity for trouble. As a 13-year-old California girl, Tracy has slammed into adolescence, arriving in her rebellious years as if she'd been fired from a rocket.

Thirteen opens with Tracy and her best friend Evie sitting on a bed slapping each other in the face. They've taken drugs and want to see whether they're still able to feel anything. The movie then moves backward in time to show us how this insane situation arose.

Director Catherine Hardwicke works from a script she co-wrote with Nikki Reed, who plays Evie, Tracy's mentor in wildness. Hardwicke gives the movie a harrowing, rock-your-world authenticity that leaves you shaken.

Reed was 13 when she wrote the script, but Thirteen in no way seems an immature movie. It's a hard-nosed look at life among teen-agers living with single parents, looking for acceptance in the cool set and losing touch with any sort of moorings.

For these kids, adolescence isn't a graduated move into adult areas but a headlong plunge into recklessness.

Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) isn't the stereotypical California rich kid of some movies. Her mom (Holly Hunter), a recovering alcoholic, works at home as a hairdresser. Tracy lives with her mother and younger brother in a house where the cable-TV bill is frequently overlooked. Mom's idea of clothes-shopping involves thrift stores.

In a way, Hunter supplies the movie's back story. We're left to guess what kind of hell she created for her children while enslaved to her addictions. Tracy's clueless father isn't involved enough to make a difference, either.

Hunter gives a beautifully shaded performance. Her Melanie is a caring but overwhelmed mom who's battling her own demons. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto) drifts into her life. She needs love, too.

But the keys to the movie are its reeling energy, the performances of the young women and the totally convincing environment in which they operate. For them, school is an occasional stop on the way to Melrose Avenue, a favorite spot to cruise and shoplift.

Thirteen isn't easy to watch. It doesn't so much tell a story as create a series of scenes in which Tracy and Evie find ways to act out. Of course, they hardly view their behavior (from body piercing to thievery to casual sex) as anything abnormal.

With increasing velocity, the lives in this movie unravel, and it's tempting to view everyone as a casualty of one kind or another.

Evie's self-absorbed guardian (Deborah Kara Unger) vainly tries to live in the limbo between acting and modeling. She doesn't belong in either group. She's a wreck but still shows traces of the beauty that once fueled her dreams.

If you want a clue about the kind of role models Evie has had, consider this: At one point, Brooke tells Evie she should drink only one after-school beer. After all, she has homework to do.

Manipulative and dangerously smart, Evie pushes things along, making up stories as she bounces through her amoral life.

With movies such as this, it's tempting to overextend their meaning. Resist. Most teen-agers don't go to Tracy-like extremes.

But Tracy and the movie about her seem all too real, and Thirteen stands as an agonizing look at the giddy energies and terrible pains of characters whose lives have grown beyond their resources to cope.

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. 303-892-5424 or denersteinb@Rocky MountainNews.com

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News