"The Edge of Seventeen" Review

The Edge of Seventeen is a coming of age comedy-drama film directed and written by Kelly Fremon Craig and starring Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, and Hayden Szeto. Steinfeld plays 17-year-old Nadine, who's always been difficult and a bit of a loner, taking solace only in her friend Krista (Richardson), especially after a family tragedy at the end of middle school. Nadine's life begins to fall further apart, however, when Krista hooks up with and later begins dating her confident, attractive older brother (Jenner). Nadine attempts to navigate this situation alongside her sardonic history teacher (Harrelson) and an awkward boy who has a crush on her (Szeto), all while dealing with the regular trappings of being an angsty teenager.

This film was originally titled Besties, and if you're like me, you'd probably read that title and my synopsis and roll your eyes a bit, thinking that there are a million movies telling the story of The Edge of Seventeen. And you'd be right. Where you'd be wrong, however, is assuming that this film is generic, unsurprising, or not worthy of your time. I had hints of that feeling when I saw the first trailers for this film. To my surprise, The Edge of Seventeen ended up being one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen this year, and perhaps one of the best coming of age movies of this generation. I mean it.

Let's enumerate the negatives first, because there are very few. The Edge of Seventeen is a teen dramedy about growing up and being an angsty bitch and experiencing your adolescent sexual awakening, and it hits all of the requisite notes of the genre and doesn't offer many surprises on a narrative level, insofar as that I was able to guess where the story was going at basically any turn. While the film largely avoids cliches and gaps in reality, two observations I made that took me out of it at times were the fact that Woody Harrelson's teacher character would definitely be fired for saying the things he says to Nadine, and that a girl as beautiful as Hailee Steinfeld would never have trouble convincing boys to have sex with her in any American high school I can think of. These are the only primary points at which the film enters a world of fiction.

Beyond that, though, The Edge of Seventeen works so well because of its believability and authenticity, which is owed to the well-rounded characters that Kelly Fremon Craig creates and the performances of the actors portraying them, especially Harrelson and Steinfeld. This is a rare R-rated coming of age film, and the movie revels in it. Sexuality is confronted frankly and unabashedly, and our main characters are vulgar, politically incorrect, and often legitimately shitty people to each other. And it all feels authentic and honest, a quality every coming of age film strives for. The film doesn't cheekily and obviously poke fun at genre tropes while embracing them in execution like many entries in the genre of late. The Edge of Seventeen doesn't care if you've heard this kind of story before; it prefers instead to tell it with honesty, personality, and a population of three-dimensional characters.

Nadine is not an angsty teenager for the sake of it. Her experiences shape her, though she prefers to see those experiences through an immature, sarcastic lens. What's refreshing about the film is how it doesn't settle for simplicity in exploring the relationships between its characters. This isn't a story of a girl who is outcast for no reason and thrown into bad situation after bad situation as she pleads for mercy, being the only teenager who understands the world - in fact, that's what Nadine would want it to be. Instead, Nadine is simply thrust into an existence rife with unfortunate experiences, the effects of which are exacerbated by her own personal flaws and the flaws of those around her. That's what makes the story and characters in The Edge of Seventeen feel so fresh. No one's a good guy or bad guy; they're people who make mistakes and struggle to come back from them. You either know or are someone in this movie. It sounds simple enough, but you'd be surprised how hard many similar movies find it to get it just right. This is truly the Goldilocks zone of coming of age movies.

And, again, not to minimize the great work from Craig (in her directorial debut, by the way), but this can really be owed to the charm and talent of the cast, especially Hailee Steinfeld. She absolutely carries the film, pulling the audience gracefully and tactfully through the film's many tonal shifts, making Nadine sympathetic, bitchy, or just plain goofy whenever needed. Steinfeld's impressive command of her part in Craig's script gives Nadine even further emotional complexity, culminating most notably in a tearful confession scene during the film's climax that had me legitimately teary-eyed.

The Edge of Seventeen is smart, funny, sweet, and uplifting. It's a story about the very real tendency of adolescents to assume they are alone in their pain in life, and that nobody else gets it. This film is a reminder of the universality of the awkwardness, sadness, isolation, and self-consciousness of the adolescent experience, and that each individual is ultimately responsible for their method of tackling life's numerous obstacles. It's an incredibly refreshing addition to a very crowded genre, and an exciting leap forward for a newcomer filmmaker. It's fairly by-the-numbers as far as this type of stories go, but if anything, The Edge of Seventeen is testament to how far any story can be taken with a talented cast, well-written characters, and an abundance of charm and authenticity.

Grade: A-