Thirteen

It's not just fears of getting gunned down that unsettle teens these days. Young girls have their own problems to face, including persistent worries about whether they're attractive enough and accommodating enough to please the self-centered, sex-obsessed boys who flit in and out of their lives. The struggles of teen girls are captured with a shocking intensity in Thirteen, which is one of the most powerful and disturbing films of recent years. Many Christians struggle with whether or not they should see R-rated movies featuring sex (straight and gay), drug use, self-inflicted violence and theft; but even though Thirteen contains all this and more, it's a film that people who work with teens ought to see and discuss.

Tricia MacLeod, a Young Life staffer in San Francisco, described the film as "A Letter to Mom and Dad." In her review of the film, she described its disturbing power:

Dear Mom and Dad:

I'm shoplifting, stealing wallets, doing drugs, giving blow jobs to guys, kissing girls, piercing stuff, failing school and lying to everyone about everything. Can I tell you? I desperately want you to care about me. I desperately want to be cool. More than anything, I want the pain to go away.

Signed,

Your 13-year-old-daughter

Based on the real-life struggles of co-star Nikki Reed, who wrote the basic script when she was 13, the film features Evan Rachel Wood (from TV's "Once and Again") as the good girl whose hunger for love and acceptance leads her down the kinds of dark alleys that most parents would rather not know about, but which are the reality for all too many of today's teens.

The film also features Holly Hunter as the hippie-esque single mom who is so preoccupied with keeping her own life from spinning out of control that she lacks the focus or emotional energy to address her daughter's unspoken pleas for help. The real star of Thirteen is first-time director Catherine Hardwicke, who originally suggested that Reed begin writing a script as a way to deal with her own adolescent struggles.

Hardwicke made the film for $1.5 million, which is probably less than Peter Jackson spent on special effects for Gollum.

"Cinematherapy"

When Thirteen was released last year, Hardwicke called it "cinematherapy" and suggested that mothers see it with their daughters. "I wanted something that could connect to kids and moms so they would realize they were not alone," she said. "I wanted to spark debate." She succeeded, and the DVD version of the film features a commentary with Hardwicke and her two young actors that tells a story almost as fascinating as the one that's portrayed on screen.

Stories of fallen females are as old as story itself, and they've been the inspiration for classic novels from Zola's Madame Bovary to Dreiser's Sister Carrie. More recently there have been truckloads of exploitive girls-gone-bad videos and movies that pretend to pity their characters while using them for sexual titillation.

There's little sexual seduction in Thirteen. While there's plenty of flirtation and no shortage of images of exposed adolescent abdomens, the few sexual scenes are more suggestive than they are explicit. The images of adolescent groping that light up the screen are no more inviting than the scenes that show Wood slicing her own wrists. Instead of inspiring lust, the film evokes a sense of rage, sorrow and disgust, which is just what the makers of this powerful film wanted.