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BLUE CAR

Despite the cinema’s obsessive, often mercenary interest in teenagers, few films get it right. That’s why Karen Moncrieff's movie is such a revelation, even though it wears its indie-style adolescent angst on its sleeve and has a few too many clichés about the loss of innocence and the pain of the artistic process. With her luminous performance as troubled 18-year-old high-schooler and budding poet Meg, Agnes Bruckner joins Lauren Ambrose (Swimming, Six Feet Under) as one of the few young American actresses who can convey the complexity of the adolescent experience without gimmick or pretense.

Moncrieff, who also wrote the screenplay, started as an actress (since her debut film, she’s directed an episode this season of Six Feet Under), and her affinity for actors shows. She gets stellar work from her entire cast, but the crucial dynamic is between Meg and married, middle-aged English teacher Mr. Auster. David Strathairn manages to be both sensitive mentor and creepy sexual predator, making Mr. Auster’s need for adoration alternately pathetic and sympathetic. The melodramatic turns and budding-girl-poet clichés occasionally give Blue Car the whiff of Sylvia Plath–meets–White Oleander. But Moncrieff’s authentic depiction of teacher-student sexual tension and adolescent vulnerability and her poignant finale, in which Meg indeed finds her writer's voice, are more than adequate compensation. (96 minutes)

BY LOREN KING

Issue Date: May 23 - 29, 2003
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