The boys are easy to grasp. One's a pimply band-geek who can't understand why his I'm-a-loser confessional style alienates so many girls, though he heroically keeps trying. Another is a talented basketball player with a single-minded desire to win an athletic scholarship and please his pushy dad.
The film affords equal time to the boys, which is probably unfair to the girls, who are roughly 7,000 times more complex.
There is the deeply vulnerable Hannah, whose fragile psyche is buffeted by dramatic ups and downs at home, and some romantic misadventures with the boys at school.
The movie's most memorable subject, though, is Megan, who's somewhere between "Rudy" and Lady Macbeth - an upper-caste social dominatrix who'll do almost anything to gain admission to the University of Notre Dame. In her mind, this means viciously attacking anyone who sullies the pristine senior-year record she intends to present as evidence of her qualifications.
And attack she does, vandalizing the home of a student who disagrees with her idea for the prom theme (jungle instead of Japanese) and physically assaulting the guy who fails to ask her to said prom.
Other assaults are simply wicked and capricious. When a friend makes the mistake of posing topless for a photo, Megan makes sure it circulates around the school, perhaps the world.
The genius of "American Teen" is the way it takes even Megan and makes her, ultimately, human. The teens start out as apparently familiar types, playing to easily stirred ideas about cheerleaders, rebels, geeks, jocks and such.
Filmmaker Nanette Burstein cleverly saves dramatic biographical details about her subjects - especially the cheerleader - until late in the film, when they provide stunning insight into behavior, and alter our appreciation of the kids in question.
It makes for good drama that comes thanks to the filmmaker's knack for gaining the trust of her subjects. "American Teen" has been knocked for suspicion that Burstein manipulated her subjects and her material, but the teens themselves say otherwise.
"American Teen" feels like truth, and it's still stranger than fiction. *
Produced by Nanette Burstein, Christopher Huddleston and Jordan Roberts, directed by Burstein.
