Probing Twelve a Moving Adolescent Journey

Rudy and Jacob Carges (Conor Donovan) are twins. They share a spacious tree house out in the middle of a forested ten acres of woodland owned by their father Jim (Linus Roache). While they’re friends, they still have little in common, a nasty red birthmark covering one side of Jacob’s face not the only thing separating the two brothers. But when a tragic event results in the death of Rudy, melancholy and grief rip through the Carges’ household threatening to rip it in two.

Life must go on, Jacob and his friends Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum) and Leonard (Jesse Camacho) doing what they can to enter a new school year best as could be expected of them. The thing is, each kid is facing their own obstacles other than the death of Rudy, and they’re all unsure the proper ways to approach them. Issues of weight, puberty, love, sex, friendship, vengeance and forgiveness all collide, and by the time the summer starts none of these children will ever be the same again.

“Twelve and Holding,” Michael Cuesta’s follow up to the explosive “L.I.E.,” is an intriguing melodrama that starts with tragedy and ends with a surreal mixture of laughter, hope and tears. While the film doesn’t have the same emotional impact of his acclaimed debut, Cuesta is a steady, self-assured filmmaker who knows how to command an audience’s attention.

Similarity to the superior “Mean Creek” aside, “Twelve and Holding” certainly does just that. There is much to adore here, not the least of which is the remarkable performance of young Weizenbaum. For me, Malee’s struggles with a burgeoning adolescent sexuality mixed with thoughts of parental betrayal and forgetfulness is winsomely touching. The young girl delivers a complex and winning portrayal that broke my heart, her rapport with Annabella Sciorra (playing her therapist mother) absolutely beyond compare.

The other two kids are also quite good; I just wish the screenplay didn’t make them do such foolishly absurd things. Of the duo, Camacho makes the most out of the very least, writer Anthony Cipriano crafting a series of silly events and then expecting the kid to jump through each enervating hoop as if he were a circus performer clad in a bear suit. Most of them I didn’t really mind (and, in all honesty, a few of them are even quite touching) but when Leonard ultimately locks his mother (Marcia DeBonis) in the basement and starts feeding her apples I seriously thought I was going to stand up and scream.

Luckily, Cuesta is able to handle all his multiple threads with remarkable dexterity and confidence. As asinine as some of them become (and they do get pretty bizarre) the director invests them with an immediate sincerity that’s rather touching. He brings an honesty to the piece, a youthful knowingness that brought back memories of my own travails trying to navigate the Middle School and High School jungles, and even if it wasn’t all smooth sailing the film still touches a chord I haven’t completely shaken.

Granted, in my day I never went so far as to even think of doing a couple of the things these kids do. Some of their choices end up working out for the better. Some of them irrevocably do not. While it isn’t completely shocking the path one of these children chooses to take, what is startling are the reasons behind why he does so. Cuesta and Cipriano realize the pressure and power parents maintain over their children, that wishes expressed in words – sometime almost subliminally – can result in tragedy no matter how intelligent and independent the youngster appears to be.

The problem here is that while I applaud the realization I can’t exactly say I buy the consequences. There is a marvelously inventive bit of cover-up near the end that, while bringing things full circle, is still pretty tough to believe. The crime committed would be difficult for an adult to conceal, so the fact a 12-year-old is able to do so almost effortlessly is a bit of a laugher. The kid turns into a master criminal, hiding evidence and smothering tracks so smoothly that those who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear would probably stand up and cheer.

Still, the final few scenes born from this act have undeniable power, while the other stories wrap their own conflicts up with considerable charm. There are bumps in Cuesta’s sophomore effort, hiccups that in lesser hands might have been the film’s undoing. “Twelve and Holding” manages to plow through these missteps in pursuit of something greater than the sum of its parts. While what it all adds up to might still be unknown, that doesn’t make getting there any less moving or momentous. Like adolescence, the truth doesn’t lie in the outcome; it lies in the journey that shapes it.