Is Thirteen trashy melodrama? Does it match the experience of teen girls today, as Nikki Reed, the now fifteen-year-old actress who co-wrote the movie, claims it does? Perhaps the answer is yes to both. If I were the parent of a girl on the verge of puberty, this film would terrify me. First-time director and former production designer Catherine Hardwicke does a skilled job of bringing the story to the screen, from the look of it (the jumpy, handheld camera sticking close to the movements of the jumpy girls) to the clothes. Disapprove or not, Tracy looks great in those low-waisted, leopard skin jeans and belly-revealing t-shirts.
Holly Hunter gives a terrific, risky performance as a mother who can't find the right balance between friend and disciplinarian to her daughter. Nikki Reed shows a convincing mix of seductiveness, vulnerability and cruelty, but it is Evan Rachel Wood who makes this movie: Woods is in every scene of Thirteen, and she runs through just about every emotion known to teenage girls, from giddy happiness to harrowing lie-down-on-the-bed-wailing despair. Never once does she appear to be acting.
