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Inside me, there is a child longing to
relive his youth. That must be the case as I find myself
deeply enthralled in the happenstance of the lives of adolescents.
Both here and in Mean Creak I am captivated by the innocence
and the perversion of these kids. Here is not a tale for the weak
nor for the shallow. Instead, we see a world much like the
real one that teens live in, though hopefully this is to an overly
exaggerated degree (though, likely, not as exaggerated as many would
like to believe). This is the teen world where sex, drugs, and
peer pressure reign, and parents and teachers are left helpless.
This world does exist. Co-Written by one of the stars,
Nikki Reed, this story is in fact told by someone who has lived it.
Thus the dialog is real, the action is real, and most surprisingly:
the acting is real. The young stars steal the show and make it
real. Evan Rachel Wood is stellar carrying out the lead role
flawlessly as her emotional range is top notch. Nikki Reed
makes her debut starring as what amounts to herself, and carries the
emotion and realism of the role very well. Above all is
Hunter, who handles the role of helpless mother with issues of her
own as believable as any I've seen. She encompasses the role
and we feel her pain and love. While the acting carries the
film, the cinematography does much to compliment it. Too much
could have been done to take away the realism in order to make it
more aesthetically pleasing. Instead, the shots are real, the
locations are real, and the shots come out real. We're a part
of the picture, not watching it unfold on some director's canvas.
While the acting and script were excellent, I feel the
main flaws of this film lie in a bit of over editing as some scenes
(especially early) feel choppy and the direction of the film is a
little slow to take place and a bit confusing at first. We
don't understand why Evie would all of a sudden take Tracy in to her
in group other than some new shirt from a traveling thrift store.
But if you can buy the idea that girls will be girls, and what's in
is in, then no harm, no foul. The last ten to fifteen minutes
of the film are some of the most emotional moments I've seen in a
film about basically bad people. Why do we love them?
Maybe we don't. Maybe it's because we feel sorry for them.
And maybe, just maybe, we can relate to them in some way, and they
are us. 9/10 |
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