[yasr_overall_rating]
High-school life gets even more unbearable for Nadine when her best friend, Krista, starts dating her older brother.
Growing up in Dublin, Ireland, throughout the ’70s and ’80s, where we didn’t have high schools, we had secondary schools, where we typically had to wear uniforms, I had a fascination with American high school and college-themed movies. Titles such as “High School USA” with a very young Michael J. Fox, “Up the Creek” with Tim Matheson, and all of the “Porkys” films. Their allure was because they were the complete opposite to what I knew and experienced in school in my youth, American educational institutions looked fun! You could wear jeans, you could wear shorts, tee shirts, and almost all of the kids had their own vehicles to drive to school in. We had to walk, take the bus or the train, sometimes both, so taking all of that into consideration, it is plainly obvious why I held them in such great esteem. Most of them were so over-the-top that all you could do was sit back and just have fun but as time wore on, more young-adult oriented high school and college movies appeared on the horizon. Films such as “Fast Times At Ridgemont High,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Heathers,” while displaying scenes of humor throughout, were more serious in tone, and my love affair with them ended. I guess I liked them more when they weren’t too contemplative and realistic.
What “The Edge of Seventeen” does, is take everything I thought I knew about these movies, and completely flips them. Here we have a film that is not just laugh-out-loud hilarious at times, but also intertwines the teenage angst associated with that age and it does so seamlessly. Hailee Steinfeld grabbed the world’s attention playing the feisty 14 year-old Mattie Ross in “True Grit” alongside Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, and while the movie was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Steinfeld, but won none, Ms. Steinfeld should have had the honor of bringing home the gold statue as her performance surpassed even that of Jeff Bridges. She is by far, this generation’s Meryl Streep, utilizing a simple glance or physical attribute to tell the audience exactly what she is feeling, a trait most other actors would die for.
Nadine Byrd (Hailee Steinfeld) is your typical seventeen year-old high schooler. She hates the world, has one best friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), and generally takes herself way too seriously. When things don’t go according to her plan, her answer is to kill herself. She constantly confides in her history teacher, Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), and almost daily, overshares with him what is going on in her life, taking up his mere 32 minute lunch break with her teenage misgivings and worriment. As a child, she was the typical introvert, avoiding people and crowds, choosing instead to stay indoors as her extroverted brother Darian played outside with all of the kids on the block. While her mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick), always sided with her brother, her father Tom (Eric Keenleyside), was always there for her but when he drops dead from a heart attack when she is only twelve years old, Nadine withdraws inside herself even more. Cut to present day, Nadine and her mother and brother don’t get along and she spends most of the time in her bedroom with Krista, talking boys and music.
When Erwin (Hayden Szeto), the new guy at school, introduces himself to Nadine, they immediately hit it off but she makes it known that they are friends only, as she is already fantasizing about Nick Mossman (Alexander Calvert), the school bad boy, who doesn’t even know she exists. After deciding to make first contact with him at the local pet store where he works, only for him to blow her off, she feels that things couldn’t get any worse, only to discover that her one and only best friend Krista, is now dating her brother Darian (Blake Jenner). Naturally, the two girls’ relationship is strained when Nadine informs her that she has to pick between her or her brother and when Krista refuses to choose, Nadine does the job for her and walks off. With nowhere to go and no one to turn to, she calls Erwin and they start hanging out together. In the process of getting to know him, she is surprised to discover that he is not only an artist, but a budding filmmaker and slowly it dawns on her that she is not the only person in the world who has problems. When the opportunity presents itself for her to meet up with Nick, by way of an hilarious accidental text, she jumps at the chance but when he proves to be a jerk, she realizes that home truly is where the heart is, and sets out to make amends with Darian and her mother.
“The Edge of Seventeen” overflows with first-rate, effective performances from all involved and it is the most authentic and realistic portrayal of teen angst I have seen in years. No performance feels forced, even in the slightest, and at times you feel as though you are a fly on the wall, peeking inside the lives of real people, feeling guilty for doing so. Director Kelly Fremon Craig, in her directorial debut, delivers a heartfelt and sincere portrait not only of teen suffering, but also of the adults surrounding them and their lives too, having to deal not only with their everyday work and personal existence, but that of the younger generation surrounding them. Woody Harrelson, to his benefit, underplays the role of a seemingly bored-out-of-his-skull history teacher with a hidden heart of gold, while Kyra Sedgwick exemplifies perfectly, the life of a middle-aged woman trying to juggle her career, her personal life and that of her kids, without skipping a beat. I found myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes a few times, not at the absurdity of the script or the events onscreen, but rather, the remembrance of so many of the situations the younger characters continuously find themselves in, and the fact that I beat them to the punch, thirty years earlier.
Available on Blu-ray & DVD Tuesday, February 14th
