Coppola adds family magic to tale
FILM
Palo Alto (MA15+) 3 stars
Emma Roberts, James Franco
DIRECTOR GIA COPPOLA
REVIEW SHANNON HARVEY
The filmmaking talents of the renowned Coppola family, which includes Francis Ford and his niece Sofia Coppola, now extends to a third generation after Gia Coppola's directorial debut with Palo Alto.
At just 27, Gia - Sofia's niece and Francis Ford's granddaughter - has made an impressive debut in writing and directing this swirling, multi-stranded tale of rich, bored and disaffected teens in the northern California city of Palo Alto. Adapting James Franco's much-mocked collection of short stories of the same name, she wisely cuts the first half entirely and polishes Franco's on-the-nose prose to deliver that rare film beast: an adaptation that far outshines its source material.
She also proves to be a chip off the old block, following her aunt Sofia's wont to cast young females in lead roles (Scarlett Johansson, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Emma Watson). Here, as if to prove how incestuous Hollywood can get, Gia casts Emma Roberts (Julia's niece, Eric's daughter) as the virginal girl next door, April. Still finding her place in her high school's pecking order, April babysits for her soccer coach (a smirking Franco), who clearly has designs on April's seraphic form.
As she goes to parties, smokes, drinks, dances and hangs out by the pool with her besties, parallel stories follow the unhinged Fred (Nat Wolff), who is having a bad influence on good kid Teddy (Jack Kilmer, son of Val). Around them, unreliable adults (Val Kilmer, Chris Messina, Colleen Camp) offer as much temptation as bad advice.
If James Franco's cooler brother Dave (Bad Neighbours) had turned up, completing some kind of bizarre Hollywood Venn diagram, I think my head would have popped.
Palo Alto, as per the norm with disaffected teen dramas, touches on familiar hot-button teen issues such as suicide, drugs, drinking and random sex. But it does so from a coolly detached, observational perspective, with Gia clearly following her aunt Sofia's style in The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. This is neither an endearing, comic-tinged John Hughes high-school movie nor the blackly comic brilliance of Heathers or Election. It's far more elusive, non-narrative and non-judgmental, recalling the likes of Dazed and Confused, Suburbia or Welcome to the Dollhouse. It asks audiences to make up their own mind about these aimless teens and their lives.
It's nothing we haven't seen before. Some stories come to interesting and even violent conclusions. Others drift off into the ether, unresolved, as many teen issues tend to be. With its sun-drenched cinematography and woozy chill-pop score, it's easy to watch and proves a solid yet lightweight addition to the "sad teen" canon, albeit one that leaves you feeling as melancholy as the sad teens themselves.
Roberts is fine but the real star is the debut writer and director, who pulls off a minor miracle in turning Franco's almost unreadable tome into something enjoyably watchable. After Sofia's disappointing Somewhere and The Bling Ring and Francis Ford directing nothing of note since the 1980s, this is the best Coppola film in several years.
Palo Alto is now screening.
