Back to the teens

The American film Thirteen is soon to be released in Britain - and will shock those who thought they were unshockable, and not because of its sex and drugs.

It made me nauseous in a way that I don't remember feeling since I actually was 13. It isn't the blood or the violence that makes Thirteen so savage, but the accuracy with which the film portrays hyperactive adolescent impulses. As I watched, I felt that I was right back there, in the horror of being on the cusp of my teenage years.

Parents think their children are just acting oddly and the stage will pass, but they have no idea what wildness really goes on. It is as if the gear has changed and 13-year-old girls are suddenly lurching towards adulthood at the speed of light with no seat belts.

In the film, the heroine, the blonde Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), is jeered at by the cooler girls at her Los Angeles school for her babyish clothes ("Who let her out of the cabbage patch?") and I felt her agony acutely. The first time I was deemed "cool" at my schools - first at South Hampstead High School for Girls, then at St Paul's - wasn't because of saying anything witty or doing anything interesting, but merely because I had bought a new pair of shoes with ridiculously high heels.

But, bit by bit, Tracy becomes accepted by the evil, dark-haired Evie, who makes Iago look innocent and Becky Sharpe an angel.

Evie takes Tracy on a rollercoaster ride that includes shoplifting, drug pushing and the seducing of boys with debonair enthusiasm. She also persuades Tracy to have her tongue and belly button pierced and to enjoy pain. Meanwhile, Evie moves into Tracy's troubled house and tries to replace Tracy in her mother's affections. It is all hot stuff.

The background story concerns the relationship between Tracy and her mother. The adults are decidedly cool and understanding people doing their best (just like mine, in fact, who were always fairly blasé, fine as long as they knew I was safe, and when I would be home) but only just managing to hang on to their own frayed existences; they can't cope with these wild girls who act like damaged women in their early twenties.

The mother, Melanie (brilliantly played by Holly Hunter), tries desperately to stay in physical touch with her daughter but Tracy doesn't want her anywhere near her. This reflects that intense teenage feeling that your body is yours, not a child's for your mother to caress.

Thirteen was co-written by the then 13-year-old Nikki Reed, who plays Evie in the film, with a family friend, Catherine Hardwicke, who also directed it. Few push the boundaries as far as Tracy does, but there were many moments in the movie when I thought, ah, yes, that's exactly what it was like.

Take the hyperactive giggling, for example: I remember being doubled up in stitches with my friends in a way which cut out the rest of the world, creating its own effervescent and buoyant other dimension. I haven't laughed in quite the same way since. Throughout, the movie dwells on mirrors and on eyes; this helps to back up the underlying theme of how image-conscious young girls can be; I remember how obsessed I was with how I appeared to the world.

In Thirteen, Tracy becomes cool by stealing a purse. Stealing had cult status when I was 13 and there were a group of girls who would go "S.Ling" (shoplifting) every Saturday afternoon. During these first years of adolescence, my friends and I existed in a claustrophobic bubble of adrenaline and secrets. We often talked in whispers, communicating with a sign language of private jokes and acting as if we were inventing sex for the first time in history - we pursued boys and talked about them endlessly; mostly, though, they were just terrified.

Evie and Tracy are "best friends" in that peculiar adolescent way which isn't quite that of lovers, but is more than just friends. At several points, Evie tells Tracy that she loves her and they do the "learning to kiss" thing.

Adolescent friendships are a test run for the real relationships of adult life, but this doesn't make them any less intense than a love affair. I had a love-hate relationship with my best friend at that age and I have a picture of us staring precociously into the camera as if we are about to say something aggressive or illicit.

Being 13 is about looking for your space in the world, and one of the elements of this is making serious contact with other people in order to help define yourself. The problem is, it's so easy to make serious contact with the wrong people.

But what this film also captures so well, and why parents as well as teenagers should go and see it, is the energy and novelty of being 13. Life is suddenly there, in front of you, you're no longer in that tunnel of childhood. You can giggle, get off your faces on alcohol, try smoking and kissing, and it is extraordinary. Just so long as it doesn't go too far. I wish I'd seen this film when I was 13. There were a number of people around me who were more than a little like Evie.

Thirteen is showing at the London Film Festival on 31 October, and goes on general release on 5 December.

Anna Stothard's debut novel, Isabel and Rocco, is published by Arrow, £6.99.