The teenager – a pimply, awkward, lovesick species – has provided universal themes of angst, rebellion and loss of innocence for generations.
Gia Coppola’s debut directorial film, “Palo Alto,” takes advantage of these recurring themes and offers a fresh, compelling look at the strife of the everyday teenager.
Based on James Franco’s book of short stories, “Palo Alto: Stories,” Coppola revisits typical and often cliché adolescent dramas, attempting to portray the stories of four troubled adolescents in an authentic light. Although her subject matter is something that has been reused in countless other films, the fluidity and grace of her visual storytelling hit the mark.
The film follows the lives of four main teenagers: April (Emma Roberts), Teddy (Jack Kilmer), Fred (Nat Wolff) and Emily (Zoe Levin), all of whom suffer from raging hormones and lack of an overarching purpose. April struggles with an inappropriate relationship with her soccer coach, Mr. B (James Franco), and her feelings for her stoner friend Teddy, who has just been charged with a DUI.
Fred, Teddy’s best friend, and Emily, a lonely girl desperately seeking attention, maintain an entirely superficial relationship in which both use physical affection as liberation from their lack of real companionship. The stories of each individual intertwine among a mass of drugs, sex and alcohol.
In order to depict the essence of youth mixed with rebellion, Coppola made the successful decision to cast younger actors. With the exception of Roberts, who is 23, all of the actors portraying teenagers are actually in their teens. They aren’t the typical glamorous, perfectly structured 30-year-olds playing 17-year-olds seen in many other films. In “Palo Alto,” the makeup is subtle, the dress is realistically subpar, and the focus is on character over image.
The film utilizes subtleties throughout its entirety, allowing the story to put trust in the audience to feel the passion, emotion and danger of a scene without showing any of it. Lovemaking montages are shot entirely with tight close-ups and influence the viewer’s understanding of the discomfort and awkwardness felt during teenage romance.
During a moment of intimacy between Mr. B and April, we see only bits and pieces of the action, but the viewer is still able to pick up on the sweet but disturbing aura of the event.
Alone in Mr. B’s home, the emotions between the two are escalating. But then we are shown April’s days-of-the-week underwear, an accentuation of their age difference, deliberately making the viewer uncomfortable and revealing the full extent of her scandalous relationship.
To the same effect, Emily’s youthful pink bedroom is all we see during a passionate moment between her and Fred. Dolls, toy ponies, pink wallpaper – objects of her childhood, her innocence – are juxtaposed with a prominently adult experience.
This juxtaposition is utilized more than just once. Teddy spends most of his community service hours after his DUI reading children’s books at a library, and other scenes show Teddy and Fred hanging out on a playground.
In a sense, these characters are still living in a world of childhood innocence, but they have been thrust, perhaps a bit reluctantly, into the world of explicit adult content. It is as if they are stuck in limbo between growing up and staying young, creating an aura of discomfort but believability in the struggle of adolescents. The film does an excellent job in visually exploring this concept.
That said, the subject matter itself can also be a bit dull. The themes of youthful boredom and trying to figure out your purpose in the world are all but overdone.
The film also looks at very few dimensions of teenage life, centering mostly on sex and drugs. Though it is not meant to be a universal representation of all teenagers, as each character has their own set of individual problems, it comes off as though teenage life is a constant whirlpool of drama and stagnancy, which is not necessarily the case.
Even so, the film is visually perplexing and is told in a compelling way. It asks profound quintessential questions such as, “Why do we do the things we do?” or “What are we meant to do?”
Questions like these are brought to the surface in “Palo Alto,” and although they cannot be answered in one simple phrase, they are perhaps the most prominent reason the teenage genre continues to captivate with mysterious subject matter worth exploring and worth retelling.
– Maryrose Kulick