![]() ![]() Popular at school and is head over heels for Nadine's only friend, Krista (a lovely Haley Lu Richardson). She's fighting with her brother Darian (Blake Jenner) and it doesn't help that he's Mr. Her beloved father died when she was a child and her mother (Kyra Sedgwick in excellent, loosey-goosey form) isn't paying attention. Steinfeld's wonderfully belligerent, hopelessly vulnerable Nadine has more reason than most to act out. Craig writes fresh, sharp dialogue, knows what she's doing around actors and is unafraid to get out on a ledge. ![]() And though The Edge of Seventeen skews more mainstream than last year's pioneering Diary of a Teenage Girl, there's good meat on these familiar bones. There are only about four teenage plots in the world anyway, and this one is mercifully low on bitchy mean girls, who have served the genre well and deserve a narrative break. In the love department, girl vacillates between sex-obsessed Handsome Lug and Shyly Attentive Nerd. Girl has a mutinous mouth on her which she uses to tear strips off of family, friends and anyone else who stumbles into her way. Troubled girl's best friend sleeps with girl's brother and, piling injury on insult, the hookup ripens into viable romance. The Edge of Seventeen has all the fixings. Given that the genre has a pretty good record overall ( Sixteen Candles, Clueless, Freaky Friday, Mean Girls), this wouldn't be too shabby. Which puts the movie in good company with many other teen-girl angst-o-ramas that have sassed their way down the transom since Hollywood discovered youth was a marketable thing. Nadine, played with coruscating brio by Hailee Steinfeld, mortifies herself and others over and over on her journey to tentative maturity. Brooks has had a hand in, you will recognize the comedy of embarrassment hard at work. If you've seen any other movies or TV shows that producer James L. Then, "Why do I even bother?" Because to cap it all off there's no toilet paper. She's taken a beating on the usual fronts of adolescent suffering, as well as another ordeal no youngster should have to bear. Late in The Edge of Seventeen, a deftly blackish teen comedy written and directed by newcomer Kelly Fremon Craig, high-schooler Nadine sits on the toilet with her head in her hands. Hailee Steinfeld and Hayden Szeto in The Edge of Seventeen.
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