Over the past weekend, various consortia of critics assembled to declare which films were the best of the year. LAFCA, the New York Critics Circle, and the Independent Spirit Awards all came forth with their lists, and many deserving, great films appeared on the lists of all three bodies. Manchester By the Sea, Moonlight, and La La Land currently seem to have accumulated the most clout, and a lot of attention is being paid to actor Mahershala Ali (for Moonlight) and the always-amazing Isabelle Huppert for both Elle and Things to Come.
But among all the accolades and celebrations, one actress is being praised too quietly. This actress has been nominated for Best Youth Performance by the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (she didn’t win), and is, as of this writing, nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award which will be determined on the 11th of December, which also happens to be the actress’ 20th birthday. I come, dear readers – and any fellow critical press agents who happen to be reading – to make the case for Hailee Steinfeld and her amazing performance in The Edge of Seventeen.
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Steinfeld is a known presence in the Hollywood machine, of course, having appeared in numerable A-list productions. She arrived in the public consciousness in the Coen Bros. 2010 remake of True Grit, earning an Oscar nomination at age 14, and has since been seen in supporting roles in films like Ender’s Game, Begin Again, 3 Days to Kill, and Pitch Perfect 2. She’s also performed in notable indie films such as Tommy Lee Jones’ excellent The Homesman, as well as the downright heretical 2013 version of Romeo & Juliet. Her first lead performance was for the panned 2015 film Barely Lethal, wherein she played a teenage spy who fakes her own death so that she may attend an ordinary high school.
The Edge of Seventeen, however, feels like the first time I’ve seen the true extent of Steinfeld’s talents. Her central appeal as a performance has always been her naturalness. Not an earthy or grungy naturalness, mind you, but a recognizable, everyday kind of naturalness. No matter what type of role Steinfeld is playing, you seem to kind of know who she is the instant she’s on screen. She is able to be appealing and timid at the same time. Confident and afraid. Like all teenagers, she wishes to sink into anonymity while still longing for visibility and recognition.
STX Entertianment
All of these strengths come elegantly into play in Kelly Fremon Craig’s coming of age comedy/drama. In The Edge of Seventeen, Steinfeld plays a high school junior named Nadine who, even two years after he father’s heart attack (right in front of her), is still smarting, and seems to feel she has earned the right to be difficult. Indeed, Nadine is the kind of realistically insufferable teen who scours her life for things to be upset about, making her stubborn, kind of rude, and unendingly sarcastic. She knows everything, and yet knows nothing. Like every 17-year-old. Her shallow mother is disappearing into her own world of work and fashion, and the two of them have nothing in common. Nadine’s life is knocked for a loop when she catches her best friend – her only friend, really (Haley Lu Richardson) begins dating her handsome, golden child older brother (Blake Jenner from Everybody Wants Some!!).
Nadine is the kind of person who, like Enid from Terry Zwigoff’s excellent Ghost World, takes a great deal of pride in her own outsider status. She likes that she doesn’t belong to any one group. In her mind, she’s a self-made iconoclast, a status which – as most people know – is difficult to maintain. To the rest of the world, however, she may be frightfully average.
But here’s the thing about Nadine, and the brilliance of Steinfeld’s performance: You love her. Nadine is a brat. She insults adults to their faces, only sometimes on purpose. Her only confidant is one of her teachers (Woody Harrelson) who absorbs her abuse with as much grace as he can muster (which is a lot), and is not shy about knocking her down a peg. Nadine is arrogant, self-pitying, and is frustrated that she seems to be unable to use her father’s death as an excuse for her behavior any longer. On paper, she’s a hateful person. But Steinfeld, with her universally appealing ease of movement, somehow makes that arrogance and bitterness into something warm, recognizable, and relatable. Every time Nadine says something dumb or mean – which is often – she becomes more human. We don’t take pleasure in her pain, but we definitely know what it is.
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Nadine is also – and this is vital – horny. She’s a libidinous teen who has crushes and sexual fantasies, replete with the right amount of awkwardness required to ensure she’ll never live them out. Too many movie teenagers are treated with kid gloves when it comes to their sexuality. In movies, teens either talk about sex in a faraway, intellectual capacity, ensuring that any sexual contact remains tastefully away of the audience’s eyes, or it’s down-and-dirty and gritty and sweaty. It’s either Easy A or its Kids. I think most people’s sexual stirrings look more like what Steinfeld portrays. Longing for it. Not really sure how to wield it. Definitely no master of it. And always percolating the the background.
The Edge of Seventeen has been compared to the works of John Hughes, and rightfully so. It has the same humor, the same frankness, and the same knowledge of the young person’s experience, while still emerging as something fresh, new, and vital. I would argue that the reason the film works as well as it does is due in large part to Steinfeld, and her capacity for capturing all the glorious, very real contradictions of a person like Nadine. These things are specific to Nadine, whose interests and patois are uniquely hers. But they’re also universal. Nadine is a striking cinematic creation, and Steinfeld deserves credit for creating her.
Top Image: STX Entertainment
Witney Seibold is a longtime contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
