Twelve and Holding (2005)

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TWELVE AND HOLDING

Reviewed by Heather Picker

Preteens grapple with weighty issues in Twelve and Holding, director Michael Cuesta's follow-up to Sundance favorite L.I.E., with nary a Hallie Eisenberg or Spencer Breslin in sight. We're dealing more with Raven Goodwin in Lovely & Amazing territory here, with plenty of warmed over subplots from L.I.E., like stolen guns and attention-starved youngsters pursuing relationships with older, inappropriate partners. Death, obesity, emotionally distant parents -- these kids are saddled with grownup problems, but Twelve and Holding works hard at being darker and deeper than your average coming-of-age film, with mixed results.

The characters are Jacob, Leonard and Malee, middle school-aged friends and neighbors. Jacob (Conor Donovan) is a meek twin with a crimson birthmark covering half his face. When he loses his tough guy brother Rudy (also Donovan) in a fire set by their delinquent rivals (the death was accidental, though the fire was not), his parents (Jayne Atkinson and Linus Roache) are so consumed with their own grief that they hardly stop to notice his. As his mother sinks into a debilitating depression and his father throws himself headlong into work and household chores, Jacob begins visiting Rudy's killers in juvenile hall, staring them down through the Plexiglass divider as he calmly counts the ways he plans to torture them when they're released in a year.

Leonard (Jesse Camacho), the token overweight friend, has developed anosmia after surviving the blaze that killed Rudy (Tony Roberts delivers the diagnosis in one of the movie's most unexpectedly funny moments – how Roberts manages to make a lab coat look so absurd, I'll never know, but I appreciated it) and loses his appetite, throwing his food-obsessed mom Grace (a mostly thankless role played by L.I.E.'s excellent Marcia DeBonis) into a tizzy. After his concerned gym teacher (Bruce Altman) calls him the most out-of-shape kid he's ever met in his life and gives him books on nutrition and exercise, Leonard adopts a healthy diet and starts jogging. When he throws out Halloween candy belonging to his overweight sisters and says he wishes someone had done that for him when he was their age, his mom demands to know if he's joined a cult. Wounded when he chooses fruit dishes over the fried junk food she so lovingly prepares, Grace admonishes him, "You can't just eat apples all the time! It's unhealthy."

Then there's hyper-precocious Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum), daughter of a high-strung psychologist (Annabella Sciorra) and an absentee father; she listens in on her mom's therapy sessions and develops a crush on Gus (Jeremy Renner), a construction worker patient with a trauma in his past, and begins to stalk him. (The Blue Öyster Cult song "Burning for You" figures rather ridiculously in their subplot.) In many ways this echoes Howie's anxious, queasily tender relationship with Big John, the pederast in L.I.E., leading one to wonder if the wildly exploitive 'will he or she get molested?' subplot is going to become Cuesta's trademark.

Donovan (who struts defiantly, his chest puffed out as Rudy, and pulls himself inward to the point of snapping as Jacob), Camacho and Weizenbaum are magnificent, and their exchanges pitch-perfect. When a dejected Jacob announces his parents are considering adoption, Leonard cheerfully tells him not to worry. "White male infants are the hardest to come by. 60 Minutes did a whole story on it." But instead of focusing on the characters -- curiously, Anthony Cipriano's screenplay doesn't plumb the depths of how Leonard and Malee grieve Rudy, instead handing them standard issue storylines that could exist in any movie -- Twelve and Holding veers down a different path, with a somber yet outrageous ending that disrupts the tone of the film and turns it into something much different, and smaller, than it had the potential to be.

It is also hard to decide what is ultimately more gratuitous and cringe-inducing, the shallow, Todd Solondz-esque portrayal of Leonard's obese family, so concerned with stuffing their faces that they don't look up from their plates or speak during dinner, or Malee's attempted seduction of Gus, a scene that is beautifully acted by Jeremy Renner but again feels at odds with what we've seen of the reserved Malee. Cuesta directs with a sure hand and has a genuine affinity for his characters, but along with Cipriano, aims to shock at the expense of character development. Worth checking out for the uniformly excellent work of the young actors and Renner.

About the DVD: Twelve and Holding is released this week by Genius and IFC, in an anamorphic widescreen presentation with special features including a feature-length audio commentary by director Michael Cuesta and a deleted scene that can be played with and without Cuesta's commentary. You can visit the film's official website at 12andholdingmovie.com.

Directed by Michael Cuesta. Screenplay by Anthony Cipriano. Starring Conor Donovan, Jesse Camacho and Zoe Weizenbaum, with Jayne Atkinson, Marcia DeBonis, Jeremy Renner, Linus Roache, and Annabella Sciorra. 2005, 94 minutes, Rated R for violence, sexual content involving minors, and language.

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