The Edge of Seventeen

The conflict presented in Kelly Fremon Craig's debut feature The Edge of Seventeen is the kind of small drama that can feel monumental to a teenager. Nineteen-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, whom most of us first saw in her Oscar-nominated debut in the Coen Bros' True Grit, stars as Nadine Franklin. She's an awkward seventeen-year-old who lost her father at age thirteen. She doesn't get along with her insecure, checked-out mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick) and resents her ultra-popular, studly jock older brother Darian (Blake Jenner). Nadine has only one friend, the kind, pretty, and far less socially awkward Krista (Haley Lu Richardson). The story is incited one night when Krista hooks up with Darian and they decide they want to start seeing each other. To Nadine, this liaison feels like the ultimate betrayal by the only person she's ever been able to count on.

What makes The Edge of Seventeen so special is that in the post-John Hughes era, most movies of this type are done as exaggerated comedies or as message-driven dramas. In both cases, the viewpoint seems to be that of an older filmmaker rather than a young protagonist. Even good contemporary teen films like Easy A, Superbad, and Juno are told in a style that feels considerably older than the characters. I often feel an off-putting ironic distance between the storytellers and their characters, when not feeling disappointed by how frequently filmmakers are willing to sacrifice their narrative credibility for an easy laugh.

I thought that's what I was in for when I saw The Edge of Seventeen. It opens with a pop song and expository voice-over narration from its main character about how terrible her life is. Nadine storms into school, barges into her teacher's classroom at lunch, and informs him, with comic overstatement, that her life is so awful she's going to kill herself. The teacher, played by Woody Harrelson, has been at his job long enough to know that her threat is not serious and chooses to engage with her in a snarky fashion. Nadine's voice-over then takes us back in time to explain to us what her young life has been like. The interplay between Steinfeld and Harrelson is fine, but everything about the first five or six minutes of this movie sets it up to be generic and tedious. The expository voice-over, starting at a high-tension point and then flashing back, a potentially wacky but perhaps wise adult character—it all smacks of a first-time screenwriter trying to get a reader past her first five pages. I was bracing myself to meet the wacky mom, the clueless guidance counsellor, the strawman bullies, but none of that came. In fact, once we're through the brief set-up, any sense that the teller of this story is following a tired template falls away. We are treated to a heartfelt teen comedy-drama that never condescends to a young audience or tries to prove its relevance to an older viewer.

Many of the surprises and delights of The Edge of Seventeen are found in the way the characters behave. Though the introductory voice-over presents them as exaggerated caricatures, the more we get to know the characters, the more they reveal their layers and dimensions. The film demonstrates that enhanced reality or elaborate genre metaphors are not always required to capture the internal emotional turmoil of a teenager. Sometimes it’s more effective to just watch someone go through a difficult situation and to root for them as they try to figure it out. Nadine behaves irrationally, selfishly, and often irresponsibly in ways that seem all too credible for a kid her age. She's covering her pain with self-righteous melodrama that only serves to push away the people who care about her. Craig and Steinfeld don't seem at all concerned with making their protagonist likeable because they've rendered her so eminently relatable. Nadine's abandonment issues make logical sense due to the loss of her father at such a young age, but almost all of us felt the pain of having a childhood best friend grow and change in ways that didn't align with our own development as adolescents. That’s a near-universal experience, and we quickly come to identify not only with Nadine but with each of the principal players in her life.

It helps that the film is so well cast. Aside from her supporting roles in the Pitch Perfect sequels, Steinfeld spent her teen years heading up a number of unsuccessful projects in the wake of her initial success in True Grit. The action comedy Barely Lethal, the military sci-fi thriller Ender's Game, and Julian Fellowes’ ill-advised re-write of Romeo & Juliet were all disappointments. It seemed like Hollywood might have no idea what to do with this talented young actress who doesn't quite look or act like a traditional ingénue. But she's a perfect fit for Nadine. She gives an astonishingly nuanced performance, which is no small thing in a movie about a character whose emotions are in such a heightened state from the get-go. The insight Steinfeld and Craig bring to the character, in terms of how Nadine's focus, feelings, and behaviours can change on a dime depending on whom she's interacting with, feels spot-on. Nadine is a smart, brash, fearful, and unhappy kid reaching for things she believes will help her escape her low-self image. She's looking for acceptance, but she'll take confirmation that the way she sees the world is accurate.

Haley Lu Richardson doesn't get to do as much here as in her earlier films The Last Survivors and The Young Kieslowski, but she brings credibility and deep empathy to her role. Like Nadine, Krista was an awkward little kid with parental issues, but she's grown into a more traditionally attractive teenager, eager to expand her friend group and date a popular boy like Darian. And as Darian, Blake Jenner—a breakout star of the TV show Glee who played the lead in Richard Linklater's coming-of-age nostalgia piece Everybody Wants Some!! this same year—enables us to understand why Nadine would find him so exasperating while also conveying his own adolescent identity struggles. Even Woody Harrelson, who is second-billed in the movie though his part feels more like an extended cameo, creates a fully embodied character in his limited screen time. His deadpan take on Nadine's sardonic history teacher ends up epitomizing the way each role in this picture surprises us by being so ordinary but so genuine. The one-on-one scenes in his classroom are engaging in the way a cool teacher who took interest in you in real life made you feel, not the comically exaggerated ways a teacher in a movie might make you laugh out loud.

Nadine's own exploration of new relationships with boys provides both her potential suitors—Hayden Szeto as the nerdy guy with a crush on her and Alexander Calvert as the stoner bad boy she has a crush on—with scenes that still feel grounded in her experience yet enable us to see her through their eyes. Unlike most mainstream movies aimed at teen girls, The Edge of Seventeen acknowledges that many teenagers drink and have sex without life-altering consequences, but the decisions they make about relationships, be they romantic, familial, or at the level of close friendships, lead to repercussions that can feel life-altering at the moment. The Edge of Seventeen unfolds with unified attention to tone and details, including how it builds to its intentionally unsensational climax and resolution. The coming-of-age journey we go through with Nadine feels small when viewed from a distance, but as we experience it with her, the stakes feel high.

Part of the movie's success must be credited to producer James L. Brooks, whose iconic films Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News possess a similar ability to surprise and amuse with behaviour that feels distinctly human. Craig, a huge fan of the legendary television producer and Oscar-winning writer/director, sent her spec screenplay to him on the longshot chance that he'd help her bring it to the screen. Brooks saw the potential of the project, and he and his Gracie Films team shepherded this movie to the screen in much the same way he did for Cameron Crow's debut Say Anything, Wes Anderson’s debut Bottle Rocket, and Penny Marshal's sophomore breakout Big. It had been fifteen years since Brooks had produced a movie, so we can assume he is choosey about the projects he takes on. I'm so glad that the now octogenarian luminary is spending his time working with young talent like Craig. The Edge of Seventeen is a wonderful feature debut that deserves inclusion on any list of the best movies to capture the teenage experience.


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