Thirteen

"Thirteen" is like that from start to end: a strange, guilty thrill ride—-akin to reading someone's journal or spying through their open door, looking in on some one else's private business, spellbound.

When the film begins, Tracy (Wood) is a good girl, blond and wispy, angelic in appearance. She writes poetry and loves her mother, despite their differences. She has a girlish bedroom filled with stuffed animals. But when Tracy enters the seventh grade, she becomes enamored with the hottest girl in middle school, Evie Zamora (played by Nikki Reed). Fearlessly, Tracy throws herself into the project of befriending Evie, of becoming like Evie.

It is painful to watch the often inexplicably furious Tracy lay into her well-meaning, helpless mother (Holly Hunter) again and again. It is titillating to watch Evie and Trace, wildly sexy, thirteen, and without boundaries, pounce on an older neighborhood guy, Luke (Kip Pardue), as they attempt to engage him in an afternoon threesome.