Juno

Juno (2007) is about a sixteen year old who becomes pregnant, and it frames that as neither a tragedy nor a lesson. Juno sleeps with her friend Paulie once and gets pregnant. She goes to a clinic, changes her mind, and decides to find a couple to adopt the baby. She finds Vanessa and Mark through a newspaper advertisement. The best thing about it is that Juno is never made to justify her decisions. Her parents do not shout, the school does not shun her, and the film passes no moral verdict. What it is actually about is not the baby but a sixteen year old realising how fragile adult relationships are. The dialogue divided people on release. Screenwriter Diablo Cody came from blogging and the characters speak in a highly stylised way; some found it fresh, others said no teenager talks like that. Cody won an Oscar for the script. Elliot Page became one of the youngest Best Actress nominees of that year for the role. The music is half the texture of the film; Kimya Dawson's songs and the duet in the closing scene finish it. It was made for six and a half million dollars and took over two hundred million. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: independent comedy drama, stories about adolescence, and the 2000s. Less good for: teenage pregnancy and adoption are the central subject, and the dialogue style strikes some viewers as affected.