"The Edge of Seventeen" is Much More Than Another Teen Movie
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| The Edge of Seventeen (2016) |
The Edge of Seventeen offers a simple plot, which would have been easy to ruin were it placed in the hands of a less competent director. Nadine is a high school junior who has only one friend, but when that one friend falls in love with her older brother, she's extremely uncomfortable and isolates herself entirely. It deals with the same subject matter every movie revolving around teenage girls does; boys, heartache, partying, popularity, loneliness, but there's something different and charming about this film. Its charm is derived from its realism. The Edge of Seventeen doesn't sugarcoat anything, Nadine isn't a girl for teens to aspire to be, she's not wealthy or exceedingly well dressed, she isn't played by a breathtakingly beautiful woman in her twenties who's being treated like the ugly duckling by her peers (despite looking like she should be the popular girl), and her flaws are deep and real rather than having a habit of being sassy and a little too clumsy. Of course, it's because of her realism and charisma that Nadine is much more endearing and memorable than many other female protagonists of recent years.
The film itself is beautiful to look at, with warm and pleasing colors, a bright striking palette, and a pleasant use of lighting which helps match the mood of scenes without being too overdramatic or theatrical. The high school is also pleasing to see, mainly for its cast of realistic looking teenagers who are dressed in the sort of casual attire you might expect rather than being walking advertisements for overpriced jeans and v-necks. Though the actors are all over the age of eighteen, they are directed well enough for the audience to easily suspend its disbelief, because they act so much like legitimate teenagers do.
Realism is the reason that this film is also rated R. I have seen many discussions regarding how it's frustrating that such a solid and good coming-of-age film isn't PG-13, but the answer is simple; you cannot write realistic teen dialogue without having a rated R movie, and anyone who thinks otherwise is naive and has never spent their day listening to the way teenagers speak when they aren't in the company of teachers or parents. Of course, this realistic dialogue is where The Edge of Seventeen finds its humor, giving it a combination of refreshing witty one-liners and many lines which other high school movies wouldn't dare utter. A large portion of the film even has narration, but surprisingly isn't hindered by it, instead Nadine's charisma and strange use of profanity actually helps further the movie's plot while giving it a unique style and rhythm. The combination of Kelly Fremon Craig's wonderful writing with a large cast of gifted actors all makes for a high school experience so realistic it's almost unsettling for those of us who are relieved to be graduates.
In conclusion, it's rare for films to accurately capture female adolescence. Many of them opt for glamorizing it, offering us stars like Lindsay Lohan and Alicia Silverstone instead of girls which we can actually relate to. Their characters talk about the horrors of high school, but portray a high school which is still a pleasant nicely polished fantasy for those of us who actually struggled and were the disliked students in our school years. The Edge of Seventeen isn't afraid to show what high school is really like for those of us who struggled, it also doesn't feel the need to feed its characters overly pretentious dialogue like The Perks of Being a Wallflower in an effort to make them more likable (like that ever works). Instead, it lets teenagers be teenagers, and it crafts a hilarious and beautiful story which will have you simultaneously laughing and choking back tears.
The Edge of Seventeen is now playing in theaters, and I urge you to see it as soon as possible.
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