Review: Thirteen
Having enjoyed Show Me Love and My Summer of Love, the next logical step was a viewing of probably the best known of these films about rebellious teenage girls, Thirteen, and luckily it's all on YouTube! As with the other two films I mentioned, Thirteen is mainly about two teenage girls who become friends despite one being far more cool and popular than the other, and although in this case there is no romantic love between them (although of course there is a bit of girl-snogging, just to get the punters in), they have a kind of obsessive friendship, both getting something from the other that is lacking in their own lives.
In Thirteen, Evie (played by Nikki Reed - Sadie in The OC!) is the experienced, sassy, popular girl while Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) is the tomboy who in fact is equally fierce and manipulates her way into the cool gang, dropping her nice normal pals (including Vanessa Hudgens, who is even more adorable than in High School Musical!) in an instant to join in with Evie's life of thievery, drugs and sex. There are so many films where teenagers get into these sorts of situations, but thirteen really is very young and the girls do look like children rather than young women - it is inescapable that they are children and that is pretty scary. Two years older and we'd think little of it, just another rebellious teen movie, but their skinny arms and cuddly toy-filled bedrooms make their antics quite disturbing.
The girls' acting is very impressive for their age (either that or Evan Rachel Wood is genuinely very very annoying) and the film does have a great realism to it, but neither of the two main characters are at all likeable, in great contrast to My Summer of Love, which has the supremely endearing Mona, and Show Me Love where both the main girls are pretty ace (although I may be biased cos they like Robyn). However, it is a very interesting and thought-provoking film, certainly more of a social statement than the other two, which seem to function more as works of art, but all three strike a chord with me, being a teenage girl myself, and I think they will with many others. It just seems that Thirteen is a film about girls, and not really for us, while the others both really mean something to me and personally I would recommend them first to anyone, teenage girl or otherwise.
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