"Short Term 12" (2013)

I've long contended that Brie Larson is one of the best actresses of her generation. She's simply been stuck in thankless or underwritten roles (Her best written role was likely in the uneven cult tv gem United States of Tara). Writer-director Destin Daniel Creton has finally given Larson a role worthy of her considerable abilities in Short Term 12 in Grace, a worker at a foster care facility. It's a very internalized role where Larson has to convey tons of information through subtle gestures that show how intuitive and caring Grace is behind her chilly outward appearances, and the way Larson can give a look solely with her eyes and understandably bring across the mixture of emotions brewing underneath is exceptional. Grace herself was a former member of the foster care system and so she takes her job more personal than most, seeing in the kids a lot of herself. While Grace's careful facade breaks down in the face of work circumstances that bear far too much resemblance to her own troubled history, her situation is complicated further by news of a pregnancy. Knowing the life she came from -- slowly revealed over the course of the film -- she wonders if she'll be as bad for her soon to be born child as her own terrible parents were, while missing the massive irony: she helps the foster kids come to open up and break free like no one else can. It's the sort of story ripe for cliches and unearned sentimentality, but Creton creates a fully inhabited world that true to the realities and rhythms of this situation and environment. This isn't a film tugging on our heart strings for the sake of it, but because these are the types of tragic things that happen in this sort of place. Creton depicts Short Term 12 as one big ad-hoc family, but also understands that it's also more often like a war zone, where a battle is just waiting to arise at any given moment. He's ably helped by great actors, particularly Larson but really everyone who rounds out the cast. The story works well because the kids actually seem like kids, are complex and engaging, and are played by promising young actors. The foster kids never really leave the foster system, Grace has simply embraced this in the most direct way possible, for better and for worse.

Grade: ★★★★