The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

Most people familiar with Hailee Steinfeld will probably have seen her first in her staggering breakout performance as Mattie Ross in the Coen brothers True Grit (2010). She's been in a handful of big name productions since, most notably Pitch Perfect 2 & 3 (2015-2017), but this is certainly the first film I've seen her in since the Coen's masterpiece. There's numerous teenage coming of age films that you can sink your teeth into from down the years, but The Edge Of Seventeen is absolutely on the high end of that spectrum in terms of quality. Steinfeld is Nadine, a seventeen year old who hates her life and hates the way her older brother Darian seems to be perfect in every way. She's struggled greatly since the death of her Dad who she was extremely close to, and understood her better than anyone else. And now, on top of all of that, her best friend Krista has just started dating Darian, in her mind severing their friendship. So life sucks for Nadine. It's difficult being a teenager, but thankfully help is on hand for Nadine, most notably in the form of Woody Harrelson as one of her school teachers in a hilarious performance. His character shares similarities with Stanley Tucci's Dad in Easy A (2010), and there are strands of DNA that link the two film elsewhere as well. The Edge Of Seventeen is a teen flick that shares more in common with something like Bo Burnham's superb Eighth Grade (2018) rather than more straight teen comedies such as Mean Girls (2005) or Clueless (1995). But those films are also important touch points pertaining to the struggles of teenage girls. The Edge Of Seventeen might be less well known than the other films mentioned here, but it is every bit as heartwarming and relatable to teenagers in general, and presumably even more so to girls. It proves that you don't need to blame everyone else for your problems, there is help out there for you to accept, you don't need to run off and do something utterly drastic that you might later regret, as more and more teens seem to be doing these days. Kelly Fremon Craig has made a wonderful coming of age dramedy, and somewhat astonishingly it's her debut feature. I look forward enormously to what she does next. 7.9/10