Review

Nothing matches the explosive potential of a 13-year-old girl's energy level mixed with a lack of focus and the absolute certainty that she understands the world completely. Tracy (Wood, in a sterling performance) asserts her independence with rage and disdain, watches her mother Melanie repeat her favorite mistakes, misses the father who has moved on. Melanie (the always remarkable Hunter) makes ends meet for her son and daughter by operating a beauty salon in her home. That she dresses much like her daughter makes Tracy's requisite rebellion more difficult; she must reach further, go to greater extremes to carve out an identity for herself. Honor student, sensitive poet, she one day trashes her dolls and stuffed animals and hooks up with bad girl Evie (Reed, who cowrote the script based on her own experiences). Evie, master manipulator and foster child with a tale of abuse for every occasion and a strong sense of what people will do for acceptance, soon controls both mother and daughter until she overplays her hand. Director Hardwicke makes palpable the emotional vicissitudes, the layers of frustration and nuances of violence, as a hyperkinetic camera follows a careening Tracy from one self-induced crisis to another, from huffings to piercings to tattooings – whatever pain can take her from the real pain that she cannot articulate. Thirteen is a breathtaking surprise, both exhausting and exhilarating. It successfully captures the rabid hell of adolescence and the laid-back anxiety of the lost California dream. An accomplishment for cast and crew.

 -- Ann Yarabinee