HOLLYWOOD PASSES THE TEST
Inventive, keenly observed high school movie comes with impressive pedigree
In the wrong hands, a Hollywood high school movie can be disastrous for viewers of all ages, but especially for youths struggling through their own personal coming-of-age ritesof-passage.
Happily, The Edge of Seventeen is in the right hands and the movie turns into a delightful comedy with poignant undertones. The story focuses on an eccentric 16-year-old American girl looking toward her 17th birthday with dread, awkwardness and anxiety.
The writer-director is Kelly Fremon Craig, whose inventive tale contains keenly observed truths about the contemporary high school experience.
While she is a first-time feature film director, Craig was mentored by a wily pro, writerdirector James L. Brooks. He won three Oscars for producing, writing and directing the American classic, Terms of Endearment. Oh, and Brooks also has a wicked sense of humour: He co-created The Simpsons.
Brooks has connections, so the teen star of The Edge of Seventeen is Hailee Steinfeld, an Oscar nominee for True Grit. Steinfeld is absolutely splendid as our hapless heroine Nadine, a girl who rarely dresses for success and lives outside the school cliques whose members have deemed her a nobody. Her only suitor is equally an outsider, the charming oddball played by Canadian Hayden Szeto.
Brooks then talked his pal Woody Harrelson — a two-time Oscar nominee — into playing the key support role. He is the snappy, sarcastic teacher who becomes Nadine’s sounding board and mentor.
She persists even when he insults her for her obsessive notions and suicidal threats, which he correctly reads as a tool she uses to get attention.
Craig had other quality talent to work with: Haley Lu Richardson scores as Nadine’s best friend Krista — that is, they were friends until Krista starts dating Nadine’s older brother, Darian. He is played by Blake Jenner (Glee), with more than just the usual jock-star pose we get from actors in these hunky roles. So the relationships all have depth and so do the conflicts.
Mix all this all together and The Edge of Seventeen is charming, thoughtful, a little crazy, often funny and sometimes touching in a very real way. It makes you feel that the high school movie genre still has merit, even in Hollywood hands.