home
| art & architecture | books & cds | dance
| destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
|
A group of three friends, aged twelve, suddenly need to grow up
faster than their parents in this engaging study of suburban Middle America by director
Michael Cuesta. Cuesta wrote, produced, and directed the 2001 psychological portrait L.I.E. and directed five episodes of Six Feet Under. His
recognizably sensitive and offbeat style shines once again in Twelve and Holding.
At the heart of this story lie unexpected consequences as twin brothers’ real and
perceived differences take them, their family, and their circle of friends into paths of
raw, honest self-reflection and decision-making.
Jacob Carges (Conor Donovan) is introverted, hesitant, and painfully
self-conscious. Born with a large birthmark covering half of his face, he first appears on
camera wearing a hockey mask, in the fashion of Nightmare
on Elm Street monster Freddy Kruger; the mask both disguises and disfigures, but
also will speak a symbolic truth. Jacob has suffered a lifetime of living in the shadows
of his athletic, charismatic, extroverted twin brother Rudy. When Rudy dies in a fire,
Jacob pulls close to his best friends, two fellow misfit kids. Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum) is
being raised by her psychotherapist mother (Annabella Sciorra) and, in misguided fashion,
seeks her absent father by becoming precociously sexual. Pal Leonard (Jesse Camacho) is
drowning in his own morbid obesity, a condition his over-controlling mother is terrified
to release him from. Leonard never guessed what would come when he locks his mother in the
family basement to force her into a weight-losing healthy diet.
As has been remarked about Hedda Gabler, when a gun is brought
on-stage, the audience knows it will be used. Cuesta puts his gun to multiple practical
and symbolic uses. As each seeming whim of will manifests a character’s underlying
personality trait, childish games crystallize into seriously adult, tragically inevitable
actions. The excellent casting and acting, the strong script and subtle plotting build
into a carefully crafted roller coaster ride; each sudden dip and sharp turn builds to a
consistent and sustained emotional peak. As three parallel plots weave into the primary
one, the performance by Jeremy Renner, as Gus Maitland (mother’s trauma patient and
daughter’s love interest), emerges as the linchpin, which both ties it all together
and for whose sake salvation makes sense.
Not since Lolita,
or perhaps Taxi
Driver, have adolescent children been more adult-like in their complexity and
moral dilemmas. Twelve and Holding is remarkable for its teenaged talents’
ensemble performance. The atmospheric, strange intimacy of Twelve and Holding calls
to mind the mood set in Julian
Po through Christian Slater’s performance as the eponymous intimate stranger
to himself. As each of these characters finds a path to his or her own
"otherness," the heartbreaking and endearing vision of the fragility of the
human condition washes over friend and foe alike. Twelve and Holding is likely to
leave the moviegoer reassessing his or her own life, wondering about their own roads not
taken.
- Les Wright
