Megan Krizmanich is the golden girl on the brink of self-sabotage in the documentary American Teen, following the travails of five teenagers in small-town Indiana.

PARAMOUNT VANTAGE / James Rexroad

You won’t find any sexual encounters with Mom’s apple pie or a hole in the wall between the girls’ and boys’ shower rooms in American Teen.

Nanette Burstein’s film is not that kind of teen movie. Rather it aims to take a hard-edged look at life in a “typical” small-town American high school today. It’s High School Confidential for the 21st century as Burstein probes the hopes, dreams, frustrations, fears and heartaches — mostly heartaches — of five teenagers at a large high school in the small town of Warsaw, Ind.

Burstein gained the confidence of five members of the senior class and their friends for American Teen. Then she spent nine months from the fall of 2005 to spring 2006 filming them on and off campus. What she came away with is a remarkable film that unlocks the door to a normally secretive, very private subculture.

In fact, the teenagers in American Teen are so unselfconscious as they spill their secrets or are caught in some very sensitive moments in front of the camera that unless you know the film is a documentary, you well might assume that the kids on screen are some very good actors.

That’s especially evident in a scene between Hannah Bailey, the school’s free-spirited artistic type who dreams of moving to California and becoming a filmmaker, and her father. Hannah has recently been jilted by her longtime boyfriend, an event so unnerving that she has not been able to drag herself to school for days afterward, so many days that the school threatens to not allow her to graduate. In the scene in question, her father is driving her to school. As they near the building, Hannah grows more and more anxious until, when he stops the car, she refuses to get out. It’s a scary, intense moment that’s played for all its frustration and fear.

Yet American Teen is not all darkness. Burstein has gotten into the lives of five very different students. Each is a member of a very different clique or, in the case of Jake Tusing, the pimple-faced band member geek of the bunch, maybe no clique at all. Jake is the funny one, the kid who has no illusions about where he stands in the school’s pecking order. He’s at the bottom. Jake’s biggest goal is to find a girlfriend, which even he admits doesn’t seem likely what with his scrawny frame, his acne and the braces on his teeth.

There’s also Colin Clemens, star of the school’s basketball team, which, in this Indiana town, puts him closest to American Idol status. Colin’s father, Gordy, who does a pretty fair Elvis impersonation, to the delight of senior citizen groups where he performs, is pressing his son to do even better on the basketball court. Gordy tells Colin that getting a basketball scholarship is the only way he’ll get to college. Otherwise, it’s the Army, a prospect that makes Colin panicky. Maybe that’s why Colin hasn’t been making the shots that normally he’d make.

Megan Krizmanich is the pretty, blond, wealthy, student council vice president, as well as being the homecoming queen, and the youngest daughter of a prominent surgeon. Megan seems to have everything going for her, until in one fateful moment, she threatens to wreck her perfect record by a vengeful act. There’s also a terrible family history that is ever present in Megan’s mind and figures into her problems.

Mitch Reinholt, handsome and charming and a member of the varsity basketball team, is a devil-may-care character. Or is he? He puts his reputation on the line when he falls for Hannah, a girl who’s looked down upon by his friends because she’s so unconventional. Will he let love rule? Or will he let peer pressure decide his future?

Burstein has gotten some remarkable, soul-searching moments from these seniors, who don’t seem afraid to voice their very personal thoughts and phobias. They seem incredibly open about baring their souls to the camera and they don’t seem to play to it. Yet there are limits. Although there are a couple of times when some of the kids party with alcohol, there are no drugs in American Teen. No sex for any of them either, except for some offhand after-the-fact references. Those things make American Teen seem as though it’s coming from a different era.

Except for Colin flinching at the thought of being sent into the Army, there’s no talk whatsoever of America’s war in Iraq, where the death toll for Americans was rising rapidly every month at the time this film was made. There’s no talk of politics at all, in fact. Not much talk of schoolwork, either. Nothing of current events.

For these students at Warsaw Community High School, their world revolves around themselves, their romances, their prom, their life after high school. They seem to be living in a bubble, a little universe of their own making stitched together by text messages, cell phone calls and raging hormones. Maybe that’s what being an American teen amounts to these days, but it doesn’t seem like much.

To those enduring it, however, it looks like a harrowing ride. Oh dear. Watching it I could only recall Maurice Chevalier in Gigi when he sang, “I’m glad I’m not young anymore.”

American Teen will send shivers down the spines of the kids who are in high school right now, and revive haunted memories for many people who haven’t heard a classroom bell in decades.

****American Teen

Featuring: Hannah Bailey, Jake Tusing, Colin Clemens, Megan Krizmanich, Mitch Reinholt.

Rated: PG-13, contains adult themes, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com