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‘American Teen’ makes the grade
We missed it at Sundance — where its buzz grew and grew and it won the best director award for a documentary — but we finally caught “American Teen” Saturday night during SXSW at the Alamo South.
An emotional vortex, just like high school, the film by Nanette Burstein (“The Kid Stays in the Picture”) follows four or five high school students in the small town of Warsaw, Indiana, during their senior year, class of 2006.
It captures in a filmic terrarium the basic “Freaks and Geeks” cliques (with one huge exception: the stoners/rockers/skaters): the self-absorbed pretty blonde; the popular jock boys; the video-game nerd; and the precocious creative artist girl, who just wants it to end so she can move to San Francisco and become a filmmaker.
Completely absorbing, frequently moving, “American Teen” has you rooting for the kid you most identify with, in our case (and many others’) the creative misfit girl, who likes to read, paint, take photos and dress funky. And, beyond logic, keeps getting dumped by boys.
She’s the only one in the cast who came to Austin for this single-spot SXSW screening (it will be released in theaters later this year). Her name is Hannah Bailey, and she told us she’s now studying film in New York.
Her she is on the movie’s poster …
… and here she is outside the Alamo after the screening:
More on “American Teen” HERE.
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