If someone were to ask you to name your favorite Kerry Washington performance, what would you say? Olivia Pope on Scandal? I mean, sure, Washington manages to strike a formidable mix of fierceness and vulnerability as D.C.’s best fixer on Shonda Rhimes’ must-watch soap. Still, the correct answer is obviously Chenille in Save the Last Dance.

As Chenille, Washington gets to be a one-liner spouting, all-knowing, jargon-coining teen mom who, upon a recent rewatch in honor of the film’s 15th (yes, FIFTEENTH) anniversary, is the best character in the movie. For example, here’s what she tells Sara (Julia Stiles), when she hears that Sara was accepted into Juilliard to study ballet: “I heard you got into Juilliard. That’s, like, the hottest school on the planet, right? Well, I know they got all these famous dance teachers and shit, but if you need some moves — some real flavor — you know who to call, aight?”

When Sara asks if her outfit looks okay before going into a club, saying that, “It’s from The Gap,” Chenille tells her, “It’s country, and you look country in it.” Chenille also advises Sara that when something looks good, it’s “slamming,” not “cool.”

The unfortunate part of Save the Last Dance is that Chenille makes her glorious appearance roughly 10 minutes into the movie, stays for about 25 minutes, and then vanishes for the next 40. It’s unclear where she goes, but I missed her the entire time. I mean, other things are happening. This is, after all, not a movie about Chenille. My point is that I wish it were. She does come back eventually, but her absence is strongly felt.

Anyway, I guess it’s time to talk about the person who Save the Last Dance *is* about: Sara. This movie should really be called “Julia Stiles Sports a Variety of Weird, Chunky Braids,” because that’s her character’s chosen aesthetic. I’m not sure why. It’s not like we were all wearing chunky braids in 2001. Seriously, French braids, pigtail braids, a half-up, half-down hairstyle with the half-up part in a braid...Sara wears them all. I’ve never seen so many different, unflattering ways to braid one’s hair. I like braids a lot, but these would test anyone’s loyalty to plaits. Her clothes fit in with the time period — puffy coats, cargo pants, fitted 3/4-sleeve tees — but her hairstyles continue to baffle me to this day.

I should stop being so hard on Sara’s hairstyle choices, though, because she’s going through a tough time. At the beginning of the movie, she’s on a train to Chicago. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that she used to live with her single mother, who was more like her best friend. Sara was a serious ballerina who wanted to go to Juilliard. She demanded that her mother be at her audition, even though her mom was extremely busy at work. Her mother was speeding to the auditorium to watch Sara’s audition when a truck cut her off and she died.

Now Sara is going to live with her estranged father in Chicago. She’s forsaken ballet because she believes that her dancing — and her selfishness about her audition — is responsible for her mother’s death. It’s heady, traumatic stuff for what’s ostensibly a teen movie, and extreme grief/assumed responsibility for a parent’s death isn’t even the heaviest issue that’s going to be tackled.