Wet Bum – 7.5

A very sweet look at the difficult life of a 14-year-old girl, struggling with all the issues an uncool teenager faces: mean friends, menial job, older brother, first crush, mother who doesn’t understand you, etc., etc. The actress is remarkable, as most of the film is told through lingering closeups of her face, and I didn’t detect a false note in the entire film. Some cliches, maybe – like the scary old man at the nursing home with a heart of gold – and the recurring feather symbolism was a bit overt, but as a first feature by a young Canadian woman, drawn from her own experience, this was charming.