Emma Watson and Logan Lerman (John Bramley/Summit Entertainment)

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky’s film adaptation of his best-selling YA novel, a carful of pretty teenagers speed through a Pittsburgh tunnel when a song comes on the radio they’ve never heard before. It’s David Bowie’s “Heroes,” but the kids had no easy way to find that out. Perks is set in the late 1980s, a time when mix tapes ruled and cell phones that identified mystery songs were a thing of the uncertain future. How did we get our musical bearings in olden times?

When we meet Charlie (Logan Lerman), he’s getting ready for his first day of high school. It would be an awkward time for almost any kid, but even more so for Charlie’s history of depression and acute social phobia. Luckily, the Freshman misfit finds a sympathetic English teacher (Paul Rudd) and his own set of misfits in the senior class, in foppish Patrick (Ezra Miller, still as demonic looking as he was in We Need to Talk about Kevin) and pretty Sam (Hermione GrangerEmma Watson). Will Charlie find his voice, kiss a girl, and wrestle with his own demons?

The arc of the coming of age movie can be as predictable as any action movie, but I forgive them: there is only one way to grow but older. When I was the target age for movies about growing pains, I entirely avoided them. Seeing movies about other kids my age was embarrassing and awkward, and any genuine attempt to capture adolescence captures that.

It’s the meat of what Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra does. Her excellent retrospective at the Guggenheim shows a range of her portrait work, but it is what she achieves with the young that is most moving. You can especially see it in dance videos like “The Buzz Club,” whose depictions of young people are the antithesis of what advertisers do. Here you see funny-looking humans not fully formed and only barely coming to terms with their changing bodies, moving really awkwardly and thinking they look cool. Sometimes there’s a touch of self-awareness, or a fraction where you can see a young person growing up. It’s awkward and beautiful to watch, and it was also
intriguing to watch young people in the audience watching these mirrors of themselves. Some looked on with the horror of self-recognition, while one happy youngster blissfully danced along to the groove.

Logan Lerman, Mae Whitman, Ezra Miller, and Erin Wilhelmi (John Bramley/Summit Entertainment)

Is watching another youngster find their groove more satisfying at an age when groove has long been found? The young cast is engaging and endearing. Logan Lerman is asked to convey a range of emotions that would be daunting for any actor, and if his performance isn’t exactly a breakthrough, his shy chemistry with Emma Watson carries that subplot through. If anybody decides to remake Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Ezra Miller’s devilish looks guarantee him a spot as Z-Man Barzell.

As much as I enjoyed The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I wonder if the notes it hits are too painful to comfort the adolescents it wants to reach, to tell “it gets better,”. At the same time its comforts seem unlikely. Charlie is luckier than a lot of kids who won’t find simpatico upperclassmen and an avuncular teacher. But that thrill of watching someone find acceptance, realistic or not, is what makes Perks moving. And like the best teen movies, the filmmakers recognizew the power of the music we associated with our youth, and the excitement of finding somebody else who likes the same weird music you do.

While teenage angst takes center stage, Chbosky fills the screen with signs of the changing seasons, further reminder of time passing. His movie is not the Citizen Kane of coming of age movies but it’s no Travelling Pants either. But its treatment of mental illness, along with other issues that don’t arise in more mainstream teen movies, overcomes the maudlin sentiment of, well, the wind rushing through your hair as you hear David Bowie’s “Heroes” for the first time. Maybe The Perks of Being a Wallflower really is for kids trying to make it through adolescence. But it’s even more like a movie made for adults who want to remember what it’s like to be lost and to find yourself.

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Written and directed by Stephen Chbosky
With Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Paul
Rudd.
Rated PG-13 on appeal for mature thematic material, drug and alcohol use, sexual content including references, and a fight—all involving teenagers
Running time 103 minutes
Opens today at E Street Landmark Cinema, AMC Georgetown, and Angelika Film Center Mosaic.