Pretty Persuasion

Plot

Kimberly Joyce (Evan Rachel Wood) is a high school student at Roxbury, a Beverly Hills school for the wealthy. She and her best friend Brittany (Elisabeth Harnois) take Randa (Adi Schnall), a new student who recently immigrated from the Middle East, under their wing. When Kimberly decides to take her revenge on a teacher, Percy Anderson (Ron Livingston), who humiliated Brittany, she draws everyone - including her friends, family, and the media (a reporter played by Jane Krakowski) - into her plot, resulting in unforeseen repercussions. The film makes use of twists and flashbacks to tell its story.

Cast

Themes

The plot primarily focuses on sexual harassment accusations within a school system, as well as the repercussions of one 15-year-old girl's actions. But the film also makes commentary on many other social issues in contemporary American culture as well, many of them being controversial. Some of the topics that are commented on include racism, ignorance, discrimination, gender identity, homosexuality, intolerance, immigration, teenage behavior, suicide, parenting, deceit, and fascination with celebrity status and the entertainment industry.

Awards

Reception

Roger Ebert called it "daring, and well-acted", but also said that it "exists uneasily somewhere between comedy and satire." Phil Villarreal of the Arizona Daily Star called the film a "scathing and hilarious social satire." While Stephen Holden of the New York Times praised the film: "An obscene, misanthropic go-for-broke satire, "Pretty Persuasion" is so gleefully nasty that the fact that it was even made and released is astonishing. Much of it is also extremely funny. Any satire worth its salt should not be afraid to offend, and "Pretty Persuasion" flings mud in all directions with a fearless audacity. " James Mottram of Channel 4 opined, "Hovering uncomfortably between comedy and satire, Pretty Persuasion never quite gets the balance right." Carlo Cavagna thought it a "dark teen comedy that tries way too hard to be a dark teen comedy." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer accused the film of being an "ugly, cheap attempt at satire", and Slant magazine called it "a pretty unpersuasive lecture".

Critic Armond White has called the film "ingenious."

The film has a "rotten" 32 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes.