Are "jocks" steak-eating lugheads who don't do adult conversation or subtitled movies? If so, what about all the thoughtful athletes who do? What makes stereotypes and archetypes so revelatory and dangerously reductive is how closely they reflect -- yet also distort -- the truth about who we are.

That's the provocative, intriguing conundrum at the heart of "American Teen," a close-to-the-bone documentary that shows how easily a group of Indiana high-schoolers fall into those categories.

In high school, we remember with a wince, we're in a perpetual scramble to figure out who we are. What could be more comfortable -- at least for the time being -- to settle into an approximate, easily recognizable identity? The ultimate measure of our lives comes later, as we follow or escape the dictates of those paradigms in adulthood. We either grow. Or we don't.

All of which makes it a sublime pleasure to watch these very real -- and very vulnerable -- students grappling with issues in their lives that seem so monumental.

How we ache for Hannah Bailey, the driven "rebel" of the movie, who's determined to leave the conservative Christian town of Warsaw for the glory of Hollywood but spends most of her time suffering one romantic heartbreak after another. We are drawn into the sad matter of Jake Tusing, a self-described "geek" who seeks that one girl who'll respond to the beating heart behind all that acne and social ineptitude. But what makes Nanette Burstein's movie so powerful is its uncanny sense of familiarity. Watching them, we are transported into a humming, philosophical reverie about ourselves.

-- Desson Thomson (Aug. 1, 2008)

Contains profanity.