The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

The Edge of Seventeen arrives as a coming-of-age dramedy about a seventeen-year-old girl in Portland who loses her father, loses her best friend to her brother, and spends ninety minutes being difficult to love. It is written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig in her debut, and it carries a genuine female-centric sensibility: the camera stays close to Nadine's messy interior life, her friendship with Krista gets real weight, and nobody stops the plot to explain what any of it means. The film trusts its audience. That alone places it outside most of the current crop.

The supporting cast includes Hayden Szeto as Erwin Kim, the earnest love interest, and Nesta Cooper in a small role. Their presence goes unremarked upon, which is the polite way of saying the film does not stage its own inclusiveness. Race is never raised as a subject. Erwin's family is wealthy, and the film notes the pool and the house without turning the observation into an argument about money. There is no environmental sermon, no meditation on body image, no diagnosis for Nadine's spiraling. She is a teenager having a bad year, and the screenplay treats that as sufficient.

Preaching is nearly absent. The emotional speeches, and there are a few, stay personal: Darian's confession about feeling trapped, Nadine's admission of self-loathing. They are confessions, not lessons. The result is a film that scores low on the cultural markers of its moment and remains entirely watchable for it. A modest vintage. Clean finish. No aftertaste of agenda.