This, ladies and gentlemen, are children. Or preteens. They’re nasty, violent, swear like truckers, and make horrible mistakes. Cuesta creates possibly one of the most exceptional, down to Earth portrayals of childhood and adolescence in the face of tragedy I’ve ever seen, next to “Mean Creek” and “Stand by Me.” Void of clichés, void of any false pretensions and completely void of any fictional happy endings, “Twelve and Holding” is a wonderful depiction of actual children, and that’s a rarity in modern cinema.
Children live as tools in family cinema for as long as film has existed, and Cuesta depicts children that are far from Disney icons, whose life and death depends on what seem like minimal trials in their lives. Filmed with a handheld realism and ominous adventurous preamble, “Twelve and Holding” is leading to something horrible, and the viewer can feel it from minute one. And Cuesta leads in with his actual narrative by delivering with what is an incredibly disturbing opening twenty minutes that rightly establishes our characters, and attaches us to them with strings that will leave us anxious to discover how they deal with this horrible tragedy. “12 and Holding” simply had me grasping my head in shock, and Cuesta doesn’t vie for shock value, he simply just suggests a horrific crime amidst cries, and oncoming events, and then follows through with a blunt punch to the gut. What Cuesta’s drama really involves is progression; progression into adult hood, progression into teenage adolescence, all of which are done in the face of tragedy.
We watch Leonard, a morbidly obese boy learning that he must drastically change his weight and dietary habits in the face of scrutiny and torture from his classmates and complacent parents, Malee learns about love and crushing as she begins menstruating, and Jacob, Rudy’s twin must learn to be an individual when his twin Rudy is involved in the horrible accident in the introduction of the film. Meanwhile the parents grieve in their own forms as his parents bicker over every trivial issue including the punishment of the bullies, and while his father enlists a complete demolition of the site where Rudy died. “Twelve and Holding” involves a group of young children forced to grow up early just as they’re blossoming into their teens. They come face to face with a death and must learn how to cope with that as new issues and developments introduce themselves; it’s an endless conundrum that’s handled with sheer finesse thanks to Cipriano’s excellent writing. The film is at once disturbing and yet so completely realistic.
He never resorts to reducing our characters to simplified text book archetypes, and the excellent performances from our young cast is also a helpful aspect. “I want to kill them,” Jacob says about the inadvertent murderers, “I can handle a year in prison.” One of the most fascinating sub-plots involves Malee’s charming and at times completely inappropriate friendship/crush with her mother’s therapy patient Gus (played with sheer strength by Jeremy Renner) that make for some rather insightful moments that show that some of these characters, thrown into adult issues, are willing to accept adulthood even when it’s far beyond their grasp and understanding. Her intent on charming him, even by listening to his therapy sessions, make for even more burning social themes in this disturbing amalgam.
Leonard’s complete loss of taste enables him to see food as an option not worth exploring with usual gluttony, and that inspires him to gain a new outlook which he finds his parents aren’t willing to help him with (“You shouldn’t eat apples all the time, it’s unhealthy” Leonard’s mom says with sheer conviction). “Twelve and Holding” shows the example of innocence lost in a cruel world, and children forced to grow up and decide by this loss of a friend whether they want to revert back their old habits, or gain a new perspective for better or for worse. Jacob begins to wreak his own form of personal vengeance on the boys that killed his brother and it’s a clear indicator of the person he will soon become. He centers his life around this tragedy, as his parents crumble under the weight of the grief, and constantly appears at the detention center of the culprits to mentally torture them.
Rudy’s clearly the character who may progress into a bitter shell, and Cipriano never shies away from his digression into this form. “12 and Holding” displays three children who may forever grasp on to their childhood issues, and will never evolve beyond what they were thrown into, and the issues dealt are disturbing and yet utterly true to life. Do any of us ever really let go of our childhood? Cuesta’s film is the perfect summary of innocence lost in the face of childhood adolescence. It’s the picture of children shaped by tragedy that will inevitably decide how they live as adults. Excellent performances, wonderful writing, and a sheer sense of realism peg this as one of the best films of this sub-genre.