By Diana Lee La Brecque

Thirteen is a great age to be. It is right before the big fall of innocence that comes in high school and right after becoming an official teenager. Young and fearless and little to no responsibilities-most people would gladly jump in a time machine and go back to being thirteen. But, maybe, while we huddle around the uni-span in our bubbles we don’t realize how terrifying and shocking being thirteen in this country, at this time, can really be. A scary accurate portrayal of an American thirteen year old girl can be seen in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen.

If you think that being thirteen is all bunny slippers and yellow school buses then perhaps you should grow up a little. In this independent, award-winning film, Evan Rachel Wood shows that being thirteen isn’t all fun and games. Wood plays Tracy who is just putting away her Barbies when she enters seventh grade and meets Evie, played by young Nikki Reed who co-wrote the film with Hardwicke. Based on Reed’s life and written in only six days, Thirteen takes more than six hours to fully digest.

Tracy becomes Evie’s protege and learns how to deal with her internal emotional problems by living life fast and hard. Tracy, who already secretly cuts herself underneath her pearly white sweaters, quickly changes into a short-skirt-wearing diva who runs around the dark streets of L.A with her new best friend. Tracy learns how to steal, deal drugs and experiment to the fullest with her sexuality. She gets pushed even further when her alcoholic-single mom, played by Holly Hunter, begins to date her cocaine dealing ex-boyfriend. Pill popping, aerosol huffing and feeling nothing to get away from everything becomes Tracy’s way of life. The audience becomes witness to the slip, fall and downward spiral of a thirteen year-old girl, who could realistically be your next door neighbor. This movie is probably happening somewhere to someone right now, which makes it even more shocking and terrifying.

Filmed like a documentary with bright, intensified colors,

Thirteen doesn’t stop to exhale for a second. An honest and damn shocking look at kids trying to be adults, this is a must-see for anyone who likes movies to slap them in the face. Even if you wore pedal-pushers as an adolescent and didn’t push pills, to see this movie is to see how out-of-control our society truly is. The entire second half of the film is primarily drained of all color to show an even more candid, black and white look at raw inner emotions unfolding out of a girl barely touching puberty.

Tracy hits rock bottom just as her experienced best friend turns on her, and her troubled mother begins to open her eyes a little bit. Hunter bravely shows her true acting skills throughout the entirety of the film but really shines towards the end of the movie when she fights to physically hold her daughter and proclaims, “I love you and your brother more than anything in the world. I would die for you, but I won’t leave you alone right now.” But the audience is left not knowing if the love from Tracy’s mother pulls her out of her deep, painful depression. The color in the screen slowly is given back to the audience in the last scene in the movie when after a burst of light, Tracy is seen tossing her head back and shrieking while she spins on a merry-go-round.

Thirteen is no after-school-special, so if you can handle a little honesty and are getting sick of a flick about hobbits and rings, then check this movie out.

Final Grade: A-