Thirteen
Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) is your typical 13-year-old girl. She's the good girl living with her brother and her divorced mom Melanie (Holly Hunter), who's trying to make ends meet by running a beauty salon/babysitting service in her own home. When Melanie starts bringing home her boyfriend, a recovering drug addict (Jeremy Sisto), the bonds between mother and daughter begin to crumble. It shatters completely once she hits junior high. Instead of living her life out normally, the pressures of being with the "in" crowd while seeking direction from someone different than her mother leads her to Evie (Nikki Reed), the bad girl everyone wants. One purse snatch and a fashion change later, Evie and Tracy are out on the town, experiencing a lifetime in a short period of time. Pain, piercings, drugs, and sex fill her life while Melanie is unable to adapt quickly enough to her daughter's sudden changes. It soon may not be the question on if she will become a lost cause, but when.

The transformation of Wood, best known as the lesbian teen in Once and Again, from a good girl to bad is an eye-popping one. Her performance breathes life into a film that desperately needs realism so that it doesn't look like an after-school special on what not to do. But while Tracy is the character we're supposed to be worried about and the one we learn the most from, writer-director Catherine Hardwicke and co-writer Reed pay little attention into understanding the character of Evie and her foundations. (It's Reed's experiences from her childhood in the role of Tracy that are the basis of this film.) It's easy to conclude that in a household led by a working divorced mother (cousin?), bad things are bound to happen. But many things she does, including the little twist of character at the end, left me wondering why she did such a thing. The film does an equally terrific job of watching the worried mother trying to deal with her rebellious daughter. Like Tracy, Melanie becomes lost in a new world and must find someone who can help her, but unlike Tracy's growing relationship with Evie, Melanie isn't able to succeed with anyone she reaches out to, whether its her ex-husband, boyfriend, son, or her salon customer who's some kind of therapist. It seems life goes down many paths but you need the right person to head down the right path. 3 stars