Short Term 12 | Little White Lies

Short Term 12

30 Oct 2013 / Released: 01 Nov 2013

Two people embracing passionately, faces close together, dark moody lighting.
Two people embracing passionately, faces close together, dark moody lighting.
3

Anticipation.

Festival-pleasing US indie has an all-too familiar ring to it.

4

Enjoyment.

Sharp, witty, heartfelt, sad, inspiring.

4

In Retrospect.

Larson and Cretton are ones to watch.

A barn­storm­ing per­for­mance from Brie Lar­son ele­vates this bit­ter­sweet fos­ter care drama.

Based on writer/​director Des­tin Daniel Cretton’s short of the same name from 2008, Short Term 12 is told through the eyes of out­ward­ly head­strong fos­ter-care facil­i­ty super­vi­sor Grace (Brie Lar­son), whose ven­tures into young adult­hood are as stormy as the emo­tion­al­ly-bruised ado­les­cents she spends her days counselling.

This is a pow­er­ful human dra­ma told with great hon­esty and com­pas­sion, Cretton’s unsen­ti­men­tal direc­tion enabling him to hit upon a truth that puts his film in the same class as like­mind­ed stu­dent-teacher para­bles, Half Nel­son being the most obvi­ous touch­stone. And, just as Ryan Fleck’s 2006 film put Ryan Gosling on the map, Brie Lar­son announces her­self with a where-the-heck-did-that-come-from per­for­mance that’s already seen her men­tioned in the same breath as Eliz­a­beth Olsen and Jen­nifer Lawrence.

For all that this is Larson’s film, how­ev­er, she’s aid­ed by a tremen­dous sup­port­ing cast – John Gal­lagher Jr as Grace’s long­time part­ner and co-work­er and Kait­lyn Dev­er as new arrival Jay­den are par­tic­u­lar­ly good. Just as the staffers at the facil­i­ty get results by work­ing as a cohe­sive unit, so the suc­cess of Short Term 12 can be attrib­uted to team­work and col­lec­tive talent.

The real­i­ty of course is that Grace and her col­leagues are only a few years old­er than the kids, which cou­pled with the film’s lack of (respon­si­ble) adult fig­ures con­tex­tu­alis­es the sub­ject mat­ter in a poignant man­ner. As a young woman faced with life-chang­ing deci­sions to which there appear no straight for­ward answers, Grace finds her­self inad­ver­tent­ly con­fid­ing in one teen with whom she shares an inex­tri­ca­ble bond, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly shut­ting out those clos­est to her. Grow­ing up is tough’ is a mes­sage we’ve all heard before, only here it’s charged with a bit­ter­sweet raw­ness that makes it unavoid­ably, unflinch­ing­ly authentic.

Allu­sions to Grace’s own trou­bled past occa­sion­al­ly feels shoe­horned, almost verg­ing on heavy-hand­ed, but that’s the only real blotch on Cretton’s impres­sive screen­play, his sec­ond fea­ture-length­er fol­low­ing last year’s I Am Not a Hip­ster. After pick­ing up gongs at SXSW and the Locarno Film Fes­ti­val Cret­ton has his call­ing card movie. Where he goes from here will be very excit­ing to see.

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