Many was the worried parent who watched with a creeping sense of horror when a school uniformed Britney Spears seductively sashayed down a locker-room corridor.

"Hit Me Baby One More Time," is not the sort of exhortation you want from a girl who should be more preoccupied with bike stabilisers than push-up bras.

Director Catherine Hardwicke takes this theme of media-fuelled expectations of 13-year-old girls and fashions it into barbed attack on commercial manipulation.

The difference here is that events are authentically informed by Hardwicke's co-writer - the pre-pubescent daughter of a former boyfriend.

Nikki Reed, who also plays the part of a teenage temptress, offers a first-hand account of a world rife with sex, high fashion shoplifting and drugs.

Thirteen-year-old Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood)lives with her well-meaning but distracted mum Mel (Hunter) and her brother.

Tracy's grand desire is to be part of the pack that runs around with the self-assured, model-gorgeous Evie (Reed) - but she's got the wrong attitude, wrong friends and wrong look.

However, a purse-grabbing stunt on LA's Melrose Avenue gets her in the swim and soon she and the prematurely adult Evie are as thick as thieves. Well, shoplifters.

This a world where calculated marketing slogans such as "Beauty is Truth" prey on young insecurities and role models are just a few hours older than you are.

Harwicke expertly charts the slow disintegration of Tracy from her first tongue-stud to aerosol-sniffing and self-mutilation on the bathroom floor.

Larry Clark dealt with the same subject in Kids and Bully but where that bordered on pornography this has a viscerally realistic ring to it.

Disturbing, enlightening and never condescending, you won't see a better debut this year.

Tim Evans