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Kimberly transforms the steely reporter into a hair-tossing, blushing mess with a cheesy pick-up line she heard in one of her father’s lesbian porn movies. Soon after, Klein is panting her way through an explosive orgasm in Kimberly’s bed. Their sex scene is shot in exactly the same way each of Kimberly’s heterosexual sex scenes is shot, suggesting that she uses and discards each partner—regardless of their gender—in exactly the same way.

The film is a veritable grab-bag of social commentary, taking jabs at violence in schools, false accusations of sexual abuse, exploitative reality television, and the impact of poor parenting on a young psyche. It also skewers its gay characters for the same crimes committed by their straight counterparts—self-centeredness, lack of personal responsibility, and their single-minded, amoral pursuit of fame and fortune.

The willingness of all of the characters, young and old, gay and straight, to use sex as a means of manipulation, domination, and degradation is pervasive. The children are more sexually sophisticated—or perhaps simply more practiced—than their adult counterparts. Kimberly is the master of sexual exploitation, seducing men and women alike to accomplish her goals.

Pretty Persuasion is reminiscent of other films in which high school kids are propelled more by ruthless ambition than teen angst. They don’t want to fit in, they want to dominate. As in Heathers (1989) and Election (1999), the teenagers are merciless social climbers willing to sacrifice friends, teachers, and families in the pursuit of popularity.

Or in the case of Pretty Persuasion, the pursuit of fame—the highest form of social stardom.

While this film lacks the sharp screenplay that the other two can boast, the acting in it is strong. Evan Rachel Wood plays Kimberly as a magnetic, feral creature, quietly dangerous to everyone around her. Her starring turn in Thirteen was no fluke; she has mastered the art of imbuing troubled teenager roles with wisdom, sophistication, and passion.

Kimberly’s age and sexual activities are both in the forefront of the film and tossed off as non-issues. She behaves like an adult woman, not a girl too young to even drive. As the movie continues, it’s easy to forget that Kimberly is technically still a child. When she has sex with an adult (Klein), it is the adult who appears vulnerable and endangered.

Kimberly is no Lolita; the seduction is always her idea. It’s unsettling. And, in a way, the film relies upon our collective cultural denial of the pervasiveness of child sexual abuse. Like Kimberly’s father, we are expected to observe her sexual exploits rather than object to them.

Kimberly Joyce joins the stereotypic cinematic ranks of manipulative and murderous bisexual women. Like Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct, and Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) in Wild Things, Kimberly is the mastermind behind elaborate schemes that punish and exploit those who have wronged her, as well as those who simply aren’t smart enough to keep up. In all three films, multiple references are made to the “offscale” I.Q.’s of these villainous vixens.

This common thread suggests that the ultimate threat to the patricarchal man is a dangerous and brilliant woman who can get anyone—and anything—she wants, and at her own discretion.

In the end, Kimberly does just that. She is simultaneously famous and infamous, flipping between television channels that show her playing the role she auditioned for in Dysfunction, and Emily earnestly defending her honor on the evening news. Kimberly regards the television with eerie detachment, as if somehow none of this reflects the real Kimberly after all. By the time the credits roll, we still don’t know if the sociopathic young seductress ever had a soul at all.

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