Review: Steinfeld's angst shines in 'The Edge of Seventeen'

From the first shot of a grungy maroon sedan door splattered with mud screeching to a halt outside of a high school where our heroine Nadine (Steinfeld) informs her teacher (a terrific Woody Harrelson) that she plans to kill herself, it's clear that this is no sanitized high school nostalgia trip.

There is, of course, the perpetual problem in the Hollywood treatment of high school outcast stories whereby we're asked to believe that beautiful movie stars are capable of being invisible, but "The Edge of Seventeen" even does a reasonable job making us buy into Nadine's apartness.

Sure, she can throw down with her mom, her brother, her teacher and her friend, but at a party with peers, she slinks out to the porch alone where another loner likens her to the Danny DeVito in "Twins."

Steinfeld carries the movie effortlessly, walking that fine line of making a somewhat bratty, entitled and self-absorbed character endearing, funny and even empathetic.

Sure, some of it is cliche, and Nadine's troubled relationship with her widowed mother (Kyra Sedgwick) is underdrawn for the amount of emotional depth the movie seems to be wanting the audience to glean from it.

The Edge of Seventeen," a STX Entertainment release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "sexual content, language and some drinking — all involving teens.