Director: Kelly Fremon Craig Starring: Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick Studio: STX Entertainment Genre(s): Drama Rated: R (For sexual content, language and some drinking - all involving teens) |
The emotions we feel as kids are real. Sure, we look back at those times with
laughter and pity. We wonder how we got
so worked up over something that was so trivial in the long run. We wonder why we spent so much time worrying
about how other people were going to be part of our lives, when really it was
the person we weren’t paying attention to that ended up being the true
friend in the long run. We like to paint
ourselves as spoiled kids, when really, we were just naïve. We couldn’t see the forest through the
trees, so whatever was happening at the immediate time is what we considered to
be life defining. “The Edge of
Seventeen” understands this better than most movies. It may be the most authentic teenage drama
I’ve seen since “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
It stars Hailee Steinfeld as Nadine Franklin, a girl who has
had a turbulous family life ever since she was young. There were only two people who should could
completely trust: her dad and her best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson). At seventeen she finds herself without
either. Her dad died of a sudden heart
attack and her friend started dating her brother (who appears to have little
love for his sister). Thus we follow
Nadine through the toughest time of high school while she has no friends to
speak of. She has a crush on a fellow
student who has been released from juvenile hall, but a true romance might be
found with the nerdy Asian kid who makes stop motion movies in his bedroom. She hates her mom and wishes she’d died, but
she may not be perceptive to the fact her mom might need some help herself.
The only person in her life to offer any sort of comfort is
with her teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), who seems to be the only one in
the world who understands where she is coming from and how to handle her. In fact, I want to take a moment to give
special praise to this student/teacher relationship, as it is never sexual nor
improper. We live in a day and age where
these sort of relationships are viewed with suspicion (and sometimes with good
reason), but in an ideal world these relationships would be healthy and helpful
to both parties involved. Mr. Bruner is
a great deal of help to a student who needs it the most. That is what a great teacher should be, and
it’s nice to see at least one movie that entertains the notion. That’s not to say this is a movie that lives
in a fantasy world though.
The emotions Nadine go through are all very real. That is why I found myself crying as much as
I was smiling. We smile because we know
things can get better. There is a whole bright
future this girl simply can not see yet.
We cry though because we also have been there. We’ve all been in that position where the
world seems to be against you. We’ve all
loved someone who has eyes for someone else.
In some cases we still go through these things. Some of us come from broken families and we
understand the hardship of dealing with a family member or two that seem
determined to sabotage their own life (and bring down everyone around them). The movie was written and directed by Kelly
Fremon Craig, who seems to be invoking lessons she learned from the late John
Hughes (and, possibly, from he own life as well).
Like him, she treats her characters not as props, but as real humans. She understands that while these are kids, they are on the cusp of adulthood, and as such they are going through emotions that are familiar yet foreign to us. She also produces with the legendary James L. Brooks, who knows a thing or two about tear jerkers himself. Though the movie is appropriately rated R for language and sexual situations, it is the kind of movie that parents should watch with their teenage kids as a valuable teaching tool for what the future might potentially bring. For those without kids it will be a reminder of a time where things weren’t so sunny and the future looked bleak. On that level, “The Edge of Seventeen” can be seen as a reminder of where we came from, and how relieved we are to be moving forward in time.
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is some strong language, scenes of drug use, and sexual situations that come close to being explicit. Because of the importance of the film, I do recommend the movie for ages 14 and up provided they are viewing this with a parent.
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