But moviegoers whose acne has long since cleared up should think twice before turning away. Thanks to a beautifully detailed, star-making performance by newcomer Agnes Bruckner and a drama that takes an unexpectedly grown-up turn, Blue Car eventually transcends the overworked coming-of-age genre and examines the crucial juncture at which a young woman finds the courage to become herself and to set out as an artist. Melodramatic moments of truth come cheap in teen anxiety movies, but this one means something. Moncrieff, an actress familiar to soap-opera addicts for her stints on The Guiding Light and Santa Barbara, also seems to have found her true calling with this extraordinary debut as a feature-film writer and director. Like Meg, the troubled girl in her movie, she's clearly breaking out of old traps.
For young Bruckner (Murder by Numbers), it must have been an enormous help to come under the care of a director like Moncrieff, who knows the slings and arrows of the acting game as well as the hazards of growing up beautiful in America. On that accident of nature, in fact, much of Meg's fate turns in Blue Car. Along with baby-sitting her distressed mother (Margaret Colin) part of the time and her unhappy sister, Lily (little Regan Arnold), almost all of the time, Meg must weather an ever-more-ambiguous relationship with the only adult in her life who shows her anything like respect and encouragement -- her English teacher, Mr. Auster (David Strathairn). Part surrogate father, part prod, Auster sees Meg's potential as a writer -- and her need -- while harboring all kinds of secret doubts about himself. Inspirational movie teachers have been a cinematic staple for six decades -- from Mr. Chips to Miss Jean Brodie to Mr. Holland -- but Strathairn's unsettling performance here as a mentor who can't help violating his young charge's trust won't win any prizes from the National Educational Association.
Meg faces assorted problems -- the absence of her father, Lily's deepening troubles, trouble at her part-time job, and all the rest -- with a stoicism that borders on the incredible in places. But the sternest test of all comes when she finally makes her way -- after many bumps in the road -- to a high school poetry contest in Florida. It's one of those life-changing events that turn out to alter her life in ways she could never have imagined. Moncrieff's plotting tends toward formula here -- we see the big crisis coming a mile away -- but Bruckner's astonishing emotional range saves the day. In a gloomy motel room, she provides enough agony to furnish three movies and, at the climactic poetry reading, all the release Meg has so dearly paid for. Teenagers all have troubles; we know that. Teenagers who can handle their problems with something like Meg's fierce conviction deserve more than literary awards. Any adolescent looking for an intelligent movie about growing up that refuses to wallow in sleaze or slob humor need look no further. Any parent who needs a jolt of reality -- don't most? -- would also do well to buy a ticket.
