Hailee Steinfeld's Got the High School Blues in New 'The Edge of Seventeen' Trailer
It may be cast in the mold of John Hughes’ ’80s teen coming-of-age sagas, but The Edge of Seventeen is no outcast: It’s been embraced by the Toronto International Film Festival with a high-profile slot as the event’s closing night film. And in advance of that spotlight debut, we now have an official first look preview (watch it above) to go with its previously released raunchier red-band trailer.
Taking its title from Stevie Nicks’ 1981 single, Kelly Fremon Craig’s movie stars Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as Nadine, a high-school junior whose life is thrown into disarray when her best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) begins dating her studly older brother (Everybody Wants Some!!’s Blake Jenner). As the trailer’s intro scene makes clear, her perpetual woe-is-me routine falls on the deaf ears of her mother (Kyra Sedgwick), and sympathetic-behind-the-sarcasm teacher (Woody Harrelson), who throws her faux-suicidal melodramatics back in her face in amusing fashion, setting the tone for what appears to be a caustic comedy about navigating those tumultuous years before college.
Related: Summer of ‘86: How ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ Let John Hughes Graduate From Teen Movies With Honors
The Edge of Seventeen looks like it may put an amusing 2016 spin on the never-ending struggle with the awkwardness and anxiety of growing up — now including the pitfalls of texting — when it debuts in theaters on Sept. 30.
Coming-of-age movies: How John Hughes mastered the genre: