“American Teen” debuted at Sundance 2008, and some viewers begrudged the sale to Paramount Vantage of Nanette Burstein’s eminently entertaining, beautifully constructed snapshot of the lives of several teenagers across a senior year at a Warsaw, Indiana high school. “What sort of fresh nonfiction is this!” seemed the exclamation-point-capped question. After the 38-year-old Burstein’s co-directed “On the Ropes” (1999) and “The Kid Stays In The Picture” (2002), you follow the expected acts and acting-out of American teenage life with restless curiosity. Yet some of the criticism leveled at the film was that it’s simply too well made, that it could not be true with its genuinely entertaining set of characters and its superbly structured narrative. Nonsense. There are moments where Burstein goes subjective with animation, text-messaging and other useful means to illustrate the inner sturm-und-prank of the dreamlife of teenagers, and once it’s all done, it holds together: familiar archetypes, illustrated eyes-wide with verve and vigor, remain archetypes for a reason. One I’ll pick out: Hannah Bailey, the shy-tall-sweet-smart-artistic girl who’d’ve been cast in a fiction film in different eras as Molly Ringwald or as Claire Danes. Here, Hannah’s herself: fitful, twitchy, troubled and ultimately triumphant. The ending(s) are pretty wonderful. See Newcity.com for an extended interview with Burstein. 95m. (Ray Pride)
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