TWELVE AND HOLDING FILM REVIEW

Jacob and Rudy are twins. One looks like any average twelve year old and the other has a disfiguring facial birthmark. When one of them dies in a tragic accident at the hands of neighborhood bullies the other along with his two closest friends, the hyper intelligent Melee and overweight Leonard must cope with their grief along with the challenge of coming of age.

Director Michael Cuesta doesn’t show much flair here. I had wanted to watch my copy of his earlier much better film L.I.E. but wasn’t able to. Was I missing something? My guess is that almost anyone would find the events that unfold here to be too improbable to suspend their disbelief opting instead for the disappointed awareness that a POINT is about to be made. Still the performances are very, very strong and even the most improbable one, involving the surviving twin, still sends a chill up my spine. The tagline for the film “Do You Know Who Your Kids Are?” sounds clever enough but in reality I’m not convinced the writer here knew the answer to that question.

But the story of Melee is handled with a breathtaking, heart breaking sensitivity that is absolutely worth the price of admission. We first meet Melee at the onset of her period. A slight girl of Asian descent her frail appearance masks an almost adult comprehension of the world around her. It’s only when she develops a dangerous crush for one of her mother’s counseling clients that we see her for who she is, a child, struggling to find a safe place in a world that is not safe.

Her absentee father is divorced from her controlling workaholic mother leaving Melee to begin exploring the adult world with only her instincts to guide her. It’s a recipe for disaster and without telling you how the story ends I will say that as the father of two young children Melee’s story left me amazed at the kindness of strangers, the desperateness of human need and the utter cluelessness I and other adults often have about what goes on in those little heads we’ve helped bring into the world.