Old Enough

One of the least well-known of 1984's many teen pictures is this little gem of a coming-of-age drama, which was the debut of writer/director Marisa Silver. The low-budget indie scored the top prize at the first official Sundance Film Festival and won rave reviews from critics. Still, it almost vanished from circulation until a DVD was released in 2010.

The film explores the friendship that forms between eleven-year-old Lonnie (Sarah Boyd) and fourteen-year-old Karen (Rainbow Harvest), who live on the same street in New York's Lower East Side but are at different developmental stages and come from different backgrounds. One is a pre-teen, the other a teen; one is wealthy; the other is working-class; one is Catholic, and the other is raised with no religion. These differences are explored in the narrative, but they are merely the details for how this simple movie astutely explores growing up and learning from people other than your parents. The exploration of the parent-free world and how kids behave within it is rich. All performances are excellent, including those playing the parents—Danny Aiello, in one of his many small early roles as a gruff Italian American father, and Sesame Street Muppeteer Fran Brill in a rare on-camera role.

Karen schools Lonnie in the finer aspects of teen life, like wearing cool clothes, putting on make-up, skipping school, and shoplifting, while Lonnie tries to integrate Karen into her social scene. The friendship between the two girls endures several awkward encounters and cultural miss-matches, but they find something pure about each other's company. Not a whole lot happens in this slice-of-life drama, which shines mainly because of its attention to detail. The performances are as nuanced and naturalistic as the cinematography by Michael Ballhaus, who shot this right after photographing the same year's visually stylish teen drama Reckless.