On Tubi, I rewatched the 2013 film Short Term 12, written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy, The Glass Castle, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), adapted from his 2009 short film, starring Brie Larson as a supervisor at a foster care facility, Short Term 12, for abused teenagers who are wards of the state, and featuring a stellar cast of future rising stars: John Gallagher, Jr., Stephanie Beatriz, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, and LaKeith Stanfield.
Larson played Grace Howard, a young woman living with her boyfriend and co-worker Mason (Gallagher, Jr.), who shows an amazing sense of kindness and understanding towards the kids. She calls them out on their outbursts when they curse or act inappropriately, putting them on behavioral-level punishments according to the center, but sits and listens to them when they are having mental health episodes and doesn't judge them because they are angry, confused kids who are hurting from abusive childhoods. Grace herself has had a complicated past, but finds it hard to open up emotionally to Mason, who also came from a similar background and found parental love and support in a foster family.
The film has Nate (Malek) as the new worker at the care facility, essentially like the audience surrogate into this environment, where he makes bad wannabe P.C. statements like saying how he's always wanted to work with "underprivileged kids," to which Marcus (Stanfield, reprising his role from the original short film) responds with, "What the fuck do you mean by that?!" It's a good moment to course correct Nate, since the teenagers are not meant to be seen as charity cases or narrowed down to statistics, but as actual people hurt by their families who are struggling with their mental health and dealing with trauma.
Grace is great at her job, and particularly bonds with Jayden (Dever), a 15-year old girl with a surly, sarcastic attitude, who acts distant and removed, but Grace, sitting with her in the "cool down" room after Jayden has a violent outburst, connects with her over drawing sketches and talking about their shared histories with distant mothers, As they get to know each other more, Jayden shares a story she wrote with illustrations about an octopus and a shark that is a heartbreaking analogy to her likely being abused by a parent, and Dever is fantastic in this scene, saying a lot in this cryptic story without having to state the obvious through her soft and shy delivery. Dever was doing double duty on both Justified and Last Man Standing at this time, both wildly different TV shows, and would continue to excel in later shows, most notably the 2019 teen comedy Booksmart.
Similarly, Marcus, sitting with Mason, opens up to him and tells his story through a rap, having Mason keep the beat going with a hand-drumming pattern, and Marcus tells a raw and painful story of being abused by his mother, who did sex work to survive, and beat him, and Marcus is about to graduate out of the system at 18 and is scared to leave and doesn't know where to go in his life afterwards. He asks Grace to shave his head, and before he can look at himself in the mirror, he asks Grace and Mason if he has any lumps or scars on his head, and they reassure him that he looks good without any signs of his childhood abuse showing. Stanfield is incredible in this film, revealing so much sensitivity, and it's no wonder that he would later be Oscar-nominated for his role portraying the FBI informant William O'Neal in Judas and the Black Messiah in 2021.
Grace has been hurt by her father, who is serving time in prison, and her absent mother, who had a string of boyfriends, and even though Mason loves her and wants to marry her, she finds it difficult to be honest with him about her emotions and history, to feel worthy of love, and to truly process the trauma her parents did to her. Larson and Gallagher, Jr. are stunning in this film, and despite that both have gone on to major careers (as Gallagher, Jr. had already been a Broadway musical veteran by this point in Spring Awakening and American Idiot, and Larson broke out as a leading star in this film and would win an Oscar for her role in Room in 2015 and play the superhero Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel in several MCU franchise films), they both feel very intimate and honest in this film about people with traumatic childhoods trying to define themselves by their futures and not their pasts.
Cretton based this film on his own experiences working in a group facility for teenagers. The film feels incredibly honest, like watching a documentary, and having to remember that they are actors, and ones who would go on to greater fame. It is a truly beautiful and touching movie, and I'm glad I revisited it.
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