Based on James Franco’s 2010 book– Palo Alto weaves the stories of four disaffected teens, transitioning from childhood to adulthood through a blur of drunken parties and bad decisions.
Adapted for screen and directed by first time filmmaker Gia Coppola, the movie captures the aimlessness of teenage years perfectly. But this is part of the movie’s downfall – do you really want to spend an hour reliving the self-aggrandised melancholy of youth?
Set in the Californian town that Franco grew up – Palo Alto – the movie lets us glimpse into the lives of four high schoolers. April (Emma Roberts) is the class virgin who embarks on a creepy relationship with her soccer coach Mr B (played unnervingly convincingly by Franco).
Teddy (Jack Kilmer) is a brooding artist secretly in love with April, but constantly led astray by live-wire best friend Fred (Nat Wolff who plays Isaac in The Fault in Our Stars). While Emily (Zoe Levin) is the school slut, a loner whose only fleeting friendships are with her many bed companions, when Fred features in her love life, the level of her self-degradation reaches new depths.
The thing that ties these four stories together is the overwhelming feeling of loss – loss of innocence, loss of friendship, loss of direction / goal / meaning.
Aged 14, the main characters are lost in that no-man’s-land between childhood and maturity.
Copolla juxtaposes the plot and setting perfectly to portray this – Emily seduces Fred in her pink princess bed surrounded by toys, Teddy is arrested for a DUI but works out his community service in a children’s library, flicking through his favourite childhood picture books.
At a “tutorial” session in Mr B’s house, April sums up this general feeling of ennui arguing that she doesn’t know how to write a good history paper because she can’t explain why events happen: “what if I don’t think there is a reason for something happening, I do things all the time for no reason.”
Mr B’s answer is “That’s because you’re young and you don’t know why you do things.”
This condescending answer is indicative of how adults in the movie are portrayed. Rather than help April with her schoolwork, pot-smoking (Val Kilmer) totally rewrites his step-daughter’s English assignment calling it “Alexander the doubie-iss”, resulting in a no-grade from her teacher on the paper. Her mother shows April attention in overbearing bursts of affection, but she is mainly seen in the background gossiping on the phone in between puffs of weed.
The only other adult to get some screen time (adults are sparse in this movie) is Fred’s Dad who shares an uncomfortable sofa scene with Teddy, apparently trying to seduce his son’s inebriated best-friend. The lack of redeeming adult characters reinforces that feeling of teenage despair, the time in your life when you realise that adults can be liars and assholes just like everyone else.
The most disturbing adult/teen relationship in the movie is of course between April and Mr B – in some scenes of the screening the audience audibly squirmed. During his football coaching sessions, Mr B’s lust for the girls is portrayed only through slow-mo camerawork, focussing on the 14 year olds’ thighs in short soccer shorts, and their swishing ponytails. Luckily however, 27-year-old director Gia does not go down the route of using gratuitous sex scenes to shock the audience – leaving Mr B’s unsavoury attraction to teens and his acting this out on April up to the audience’s imagination.
While we are spared full on sex scenes, the relationship does make your toes-curl, especially after James Franco was exposed ‘sexting’ a 17-year-old Scottish teenager earlier this year. Whether it was just a viral-hoax to promote Palo Alto or not, the episode helped to transform Franco from Spiderman heart-throb to a believable predator.
In this movie his signature half-smirk has now lost its air of sexiness and easily translates to something more sinister lurking underneath. Luckily the movie isn’t swallowed up by the circus of Franco’s is he / isn’t he interested in jailbait.
While the plot is sparse and at a times stagnant, the acting and cinematography is strong enough to keep you interested.
On hearing the cast you would be forgiven for thinking this movie is just a project of pure nepotism -director Gia Coppola is the granddaughter of Francis, niece of Sofia, which Jack Kilmer is Val’s son, and Emma Roberts is Julia’s niece. But these three young stars shine, especially newcomer to the screen Jack, whose brooding intensity likens him to a young River Phoenix.
Emma, in her early 20s while shooting the movie could have overplayed the innocence of her character, but she doesn’t fall into the trap of playing the part cutesy and coy. While Gia’s hazy, Instagram-filtered type cinematography has a timelessness to it that adds to the movie’s feeling of directionless, lost in time and space.
This movie is a valiant effort from a young cast, if you are sick of teen movies that portray those confused, angst-ridden years as the best years of your life then head along to this. It will make you remember just how emotionally exhausting and wearisome that time of life can actually be.
I’d give it 3 out of 5 – great acting and cinematography but not something I’d watch again.
