`THIRTEEN': DAYS OF WINE AND NOSE RINGS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE GIRLS IN ``Thirteen'' are nothing like Lizzie McGuire. For one thing, they're interesting. For another, they're every parent's heart attack.

Written by then-13-year-old co-star Nikki Reed (with the aid of director Catherine Hardwicke), this immersive study of no-longer-girls-gone-wild strip-mines every alarmist notion in pop psych books about modern teens.

But thanks to a brilliantly convincing cast, headlined by Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood's mother-daughter Apache dance act, even the busiest dysfunction pile-ons maintain a clear core of behavioral truth.

First-time director Hardwicke has a knack for getting us deep inside her characters' frazzled heads. A movie production designer, she comes from an architectural background - as, reportedly, does ``Thirteen'' cinematographer Elliot Davis (``Out of Sight,'' ``White Oleander,'' Spike Lee's ``Get on the Bus''). Shot handheld, often in-close, on zit-emulsioned Super 16, the film's form has an itchy, growing, ``What next?'' feel to it that evokes a crazy pubescent girl's outlook. That's fascinating and scary, if you want the simple translation.

Wood, who played the sensitive girl on TV's ``Once and Again,'' is Tracy, a good, smart kid who lives with her brother and their divorced, recovering alcoholic mother Melanie (Hunter), in a modest Venice-area home. But Tracy's first few days at middle school change all that. Tracy instantly realizes that the boys are more interested in the flirtatious, sexualized girls, and sets to trading Barbies for belly button rings.

And a whole lot worse. Tracy's real romance is with Evie (Reed), the hottest babe in seventh grade and her new best friend. Under Evie's influence, Tracy lets her studies slide in favor of such fun activities as shoplifting on Melrose, notching up boys, downing oodles of drugs and drinks and piercing yet more body parts.

Evie is super cool and bad to the bone, but she's also a lucky beneficiary of Reed and Hardwicke's writing sympathy. They actually make this mighty mini-manipulator a tragic lost girl as well. She's desperate for the support and safety she discovers in the unlikely environs of her mother's messy household.

Whatever her failings as a parent and a person (both are legion), Mel has a knack for nurturing. Immature in many ways herself, the woman struggles mightily to keep it together for the sake of her children, even as she gives in to an addict ex-boyfriend whom Tracy hates (``Six Feet Under's'' Jeremy Sisto, bringing charming humor and subtle compassion to what could have been a thankless role). Mel's heart melts for needy Evie even as her best instincts cry out in protest. And as her beloved Tracy turns so unreasonably, viciously against Mel, Hunter accesses a mother's angst as devastatingly as any screen actress ever has.

Matching Hunter's magnificent performance shout for shout and tear for tear, young Wood rises to that rarefied stratum of child actors who can make chilling, lasting impressions (like Anna Paquin in ``The Piano''; is Hunter the most inspiring mom-player in the world or what?).

Overwrought though it often is, ``Thirteen'' delivers a fantastic fusion of performance and the kind of cinematic enhancement that amplifies the humanity of it. It's well worth seeing, even at the risk of making you want to lock your daughter in her room for the next six years.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THIRTEEN - three and one half stars

(R: drug use, sex, nudity, violence, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Sisto, Deborah Kara Unger, Kip Pardue.

Director: Catherine Hardwicke.

Running time: 1 hr. 35 min.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Monica, Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Just out of her tweens, the daughter of a troubled mom causes way more trouble for herself.

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Holly Hunter delivers an amazing performance as the alcoholic mother of a troubled girl in ``Thirteen.''