Edge of Seventeen (2016)

Unusually smart "coming of age" comedy/drama from writer and first time director Kelly Fremon Craig (Post Grad) . The film stars Hailee Steinfield as Nadain Frank, a socially nominal high school junior, who feels her world go into crises when her best and only friend Kristia (Haley Lu Richardson) starts dating her popular older brother Darin (Blake Jenner). Nadain's beloved father Tom (Eric Keenleyside, seen in flashback) had passed away from a heart attack nearly four years prior, and having never really connected with her neurotic mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick), she seeks solace from her grumpy history teacher Mr. Brunner (Woody Harrelson), pines for distant bad boy Nick Mossman (Alexander Calvert), and gradually befriends nice guy classmate Erwin (Hayden Szeto, charming). Nadain's situation is awkward and unenviable, but like many teenagers, owing to her state of social development, she compounds her problems by taking things out of proportion, something which the film itself does an excellent job of not doing. This is one of the best written and emotionally realistic movies about high school I have ever seen. The performances are uniformly strong with Steinfield's the standout, and I don't think an Oscar nomination would be out of place here, she is deceptively good and true in this. Perhaps the only thing lacking from Edge of Seventeen is Stevie Nicks in the soundtrack, how did that happen? ***1/2