Edge of Seventeen

Ohio, 1984. Eric is about to enter his last year of school and works a summer job in the kitchen of an amusement park. There he meets Rod, who is at university and has no difficulty with being gay. For the first time Eric talks to someone else about what he has been thinking about himself. The summer ends and Rod leaves. At school, at home, and with his closest friend Maggie, Eric does not know what to do. He goes to a bar, dyes his hair, changes his clothes and tells his mother nothing. David Moreton directs. Chris Stafford plays Eric, Tina Holmes plays Maggie and Lea DeLaria plays Angie, who runs the bar. The period matters: in a small American town in the middle of the eighties there is nobody to discuss this with, and the narrative shows that not as an obstacle but as a silence. The hardest strand is the one with Maggie; Eric lies to his friend too, and the film does not defend him for it. Music of the period is used heavily and carries the character's emotional condition. It was made cheaply and belongs to the independent youth wave of the late nineties. The mother is what stands out most; the narrative shows her as neither understanding nor cruel, only unprepared. Who it is for: viewers who like independent youth drama and an eighties setting. Who it is not for: the production is rough, the acting uneven, and the narrative moves in separate episodes.