American Teen

“American Teen” is populated by high school archetypes, kids who might have stepped out of the mists of their own adolescence.There is the blond popular girl, Megan Krizmanich, and her blond sidekick, Ali Wikalinska, young women who wield inordinate power over the social fates of their peers. There is Colin Clemens, the basketball star hoping to land a college scholarship and facing pressure at home from his ex-athlete dad. There is Hannah Bailey, the artsy misfit girl who dreams of becoming a filmmaker and who enters into a transgressive romance with a dimple-chinned athlete named Mitch Reinholt. And there is also Jake Tusing, a self-identified nerd with a bad haircut, serious acne and a heavy video-game habit.
Not everything works out according to the teen movie formula. There are some odd developments and unexpected reversals — a trip to Tijuana, a breakup via text message — to complicate the anticipated narrative arc. There are moments of breathtaking cruelty, unguarded emotion and plain weirdness. And there are some genuinely scary turns, as when Hannah, brutally dumped by the boyfriend before Mitch, falls into a depression so severe that she can’t bring herself to go to school.
However, the real twist is that all the characters in “American Teen” are real people, students in Warsaw, Ind. discovered by Nanette Burstein and arrayed in her fascinating, queasy-making new documentary. The fascination comes from how unguarded these young people seem to be about their own lives, speaking frankly to the camera and allowing it to observe uncomfortable and intimate moments in their lives. The queasiness, inevitably, arises from the same source.