Palo Alto

          Alas, Gia Coppola has followed in the footsteps of her aunt and grandfather: she has become a filmmaker. For her debut feature, she adapted James Franco's book of short stories, Palo Alto: Stories. After initially drafting separate screenplays for the different recurring characters from the short stories, Gia integrated their distinct lives into one singular screenplay. The characters are comprised of teenagers living in Palo Alto, California, all of whom struggle to make good choices under the extreme intensity of teenage life. Emma Roberts, who first read the book the day it came out, plays April, a soccer player whose coach has inappropriate desires for her. He is called Mr. B. and is played by James Franco himself. Jack Kilmer, first-time actor and son of Val Kilmer, plays Teddy, an "alcoholic" troublemaker with good intentions and a crush on April. Nat Wolff plays Fred, Teddy's best friend, who is a troublemaker with bad intentions. He always seems to be around when Teddy makes ill-fated decisions. Then there is Emily, a combination of the characters Pam and Emily from the book. Played by Zoe Levin, Emily lacks true romance but chases it everywhere she goes, flinging herself at all males in her path.

          Palo Alto has been getting great reviews from critics and relatively poor reviews from the general public. Many average moviegoers are complaining about Franco's name being second on the poster despite his quaint screen time. Usually I would join in on this criticism. For example, it always bugged me that Anna Gunn got the second slot in the opening titles, coming before Aaron Paul. Skyler may have been married to Walter White, but Jesse clearly was more important to him. However, I think the author of the original source material deserves a boost in positioning credits-wise. Furthermore, people would not have been misled had they read the book. On the other hand, critics and moviegoers alike have been saying that Palo Alto is just another high school movie, that it does not mix things up or portray teenage life in a new light. I can respect that, but exactly what else could we possibly want adult filmmakers to tell us about teen life? We all go through that, as do the filmmakers. If they feel a personal connection with something like Palo Alto: Stories and want to turn it into a movie, then they should be able to do that without being expected to reveal some shocking part about being a teen that we have never seen before. Because we have seen it all, we have lived it all. All Gia needed to do was make it her own aesthetically and get good performances from her actors.

          Born into a family of distinguished auteurs, Gia had a rare burden to bare upon agreeing to direct Palo Alto. Francis Ford's The Outsiders aside, I predicted she would be more like her aunt, since Sofia is more current and often deals with adolescent tales. Looking at Palo Alto, one can see parallels to Sofia's work. One obvious correlation was the palm tree shot from Teddy's mom's car. There was a practically identical shot in Sofia's The Bling Ring, which was also about rebellious teens. It was also a nice shout-out to have an unlabeled piece of the poster of Sofia's The Virgin Suicides on April's wall.

          Nonetheless, Gia did create her own voice apart from her family's or Franco's. She has evident great taste in shot variation, going closer in on characters' faces - particularly April's - when they discover new highs or face new lows. Regardless of the ultra-low budget of under one million dollars, the colors are brought out nicely, which is not usually the case with such budgets. Surely the film does not look like it came from a hundred million dollars, but most cinephiles today are appreciating a new wave of dull-colored indies over the ostentatiously-colored superhero movies. Such films with bland palates like Mud, Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, and Greece's Dogtooth have been widely acclaimed. If nothing else, Palo Alto rises above these loved indies with its plentiful-though-not-overreaching assortment of colors. Like these films, Palo Alto features rather bland backgrounds, but they are overtaken by bold colors in the foreground. The costumes contribute greatly to this triumph, though much of the characters' wardrobes were taken from the actors' own closets. Additionally, the lighting creates a phantom effect on the subjects, which looks similar to many of Gia's photographs from before working on this film, though much of the mastering of the effect may have been done in post-production. She was also not afraid to be out of focus at times, which further illustrated the confusion of adolescence. The key is that she did not overuse this technique. It is worth mentioning that the cinematographer was Autumn Durald. She has not done much thus far, but I look forward to keeping an eye out for her in the future.

          As her job description as director requires, Gia got good performances from her actors. Leading the cast, Emma Roberts gave probably her best performance to date. Although Franco was not in much of the movie, he nailed it in every scene he was in. Mr. B.'s affection for April could be felt in the way Franco looked into Roberts' eyes. At the same time, he took a simplistic approach to the character, not pushing anything or trying to overpower his fellow actors, which was wise. Jack Kilmer gave a realistic portrayal of a guy who is not yet sure of exactly what he wants. Kilmer's absence of acting experience probably helped him this time. He is another rising star to watch out for. Levin and Wolff were sufficient, but not standouts. The only bad actor in the whole movie was the one who played Teddy's parole officer.

          Gia Coppola has found her voice. Every minute of Palo Alto is engaging, especially several special sequences, which I will not spoil here. Like Sofia Coppola, Gia adapted a book for the screen for her debut feature film. She pulled much of the dialogue straight from Franco's pages, but she deserves credit for filling in the blanks and making one cohesive narrative out of a collection of short stories. I myself read that book, and I genuinely loved the direction she went in every time she strayed from the original structure. As part of that, she inserted some of her own dialogue, which added humor and a motif to be referred back to at the end of the movie. Gia Coppola showed off what she has got in Palo Alto, and I am hopeful her sophomore project will be even stronger.

Afterthought: I realize that I only included stills of Roberts as April, but she was truly photographed the best in the movie. Plus most of the released stills are of her.