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Edge Of Seventeen

1999, Movie, NR, 99 mins

Edge Of Seventeen: Review

EDGE OF SEVENTEEN
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Yes, it's another gay coming-of-age while coming-out drama, but rarely has the subject been so truthfully addressed. It's 1984 in the small town of Sandusky, OH, and 17-year-old Eric (Chris Stafford) — an aspiring synth-pop musician who worships Annie Lennox and dreams of life in New York City — and his best friend Maggie (Tina Holmes) have taken summer jobs slinging hash at an amusement park grub-wagon. Maggie doesn't know Eric is gay — in fact, he doesn't fully realize it himself until he meets coworker Rod (Anderson Gabrych), a promiscuous college student who, by the end of the summer, has seduced and then abandoned Eric. It's a painful experience, but it's only the first of a number of hard lessons Eric and Maggie are about to learn about growing up and being gay. The whole coming-out thing has long been the grist for a young gay filmmaker's mill, but writer Todd Stephens' dead-on observations about teenage life recall such no-budget winners as WHATEVER and ALL OVER ME as much as BEAUTIFUL THING. Director David Moreton makes good use of his '80s soundtrack, spinning evocative tunes by Yazoo, Haircut 100 and the Bronski Beat without wallowing in WEDDING SINGER-style kitsch. But what really sets the film apart is a strikingly assured performance from Stafford (it's refreshing to see some young talent coming from somewhere other than UPN), a poignant and amazingly well-articulated dynamic between Eric and Maggie and Stephens and Moreton's willingness to leave important relationships unresolved and loose ends untied. In a film about a young man standing on the brink of the rest of his life, that's just as it should be. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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