Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 8:32 am 
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EMMA ROBERTS AND JACK KILMER IN PALO ALTO

Kids on the loose

Gia Coppola is Sofia's niece and Francis's granddaughter. In this feature film debut as a director, which is vivid and assured, if a little fragmentary, she has adapted stories from James Franco's collection of the same name, simplified them, and woven them together more. What we get is an up-to-date portrait of a group of white teenagers from a well-off community (where Standford University is and Franco grew up), who often gather at the house of one of them when adults are absent to party hard, with a bit of sex and plenty of strong weed and hard liquor. Three of them come forward, the quiet, artistic Teddy (Jack Kilmer, a complete newcomer, but son of Val) his more nihilistic and aggressive best mate Fred (Nat Wolff), and the virginal, sweet April (Emma Roberts). These kids live totally in the moment. Classes, college, or career ambitions go unmentioned. Adults are unseen, or when seen are often stoned or otherwise irresponsible. Val Kilmer is one of these parents never without a doobie or pipe. James Franco is the predatory soccer coach using babysitting as an excuse to seduce April. Fred's father (Chris Messina) turns out to be gay and gets high with Teddy and hits on him.

Though the short-story-origin limits the action even in adaptation, the three main kids' acting, and others', is fine, and we just enjoy watching one well done scene after another. Maybe later we wonder about what's lacking, not in the filmmaking, but in the material. But Gia has a sure touch that makes her, like her grandfather and her aunt, one to wat​ch.​

Clearly this is not the generation of Eighties S.E. Hinton novels with their working class realism, poverty and pregnancies that granddad Coppola tackled in The Outsiders and Rumblefish, and the Eighties youth picture era is long gone. There's also not the nice narrative curve Sofia Coppola had to deal with in her debut, The Virgin Suicides, adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides, a more sophisticated literary source than the young James Franco.

But currency and immediacy are strong here. Dialogue between Teddy and Fred in Fred's car starts things off with an ear for how these kids talk, peppered with terms of playful abuse like "dawg," "nigga" and "bitch," nearly every sentence containing an obligatory "fuckin." These words have no bite, but the edge is in Fred's firecracker personality. When Fred ends the scene by ramming the car into the wall it's facing, just for laughs, we know what Fred's like. Fred is a loose cannon, entering every scene with a genuine air of danger and unpredictability, which gets him the undiscriminatingly promiscuous Chrissy (Olivia Crocicchia) till it doesn't. Various blowjobs by Chrissy punctuate the action along with party scenes. ​The key sequence developing Teddys character is when he and Fred are drunk and he's driving and crashes into a car at an intersection. True to his answer to one of Fred's "What if" questions, he chooses to drive off, which leads to a DUI year's probation and 100+ hours of community service, first at a children's library that he loves, till both he and Fred ​screw it up and he's shifted to an old people's home. These scenes alternate with drawing class with a blowhard teacher who, when Fred crashes the class and does a jokey drawing, warns him he's headed in the wrong direction -- foreshadowing Fred's dangerous finale.

Kilmer junior is reportedly inexperienced as an actor, but you never see that. He's a natural, with an appealing loose-limbed look and style, and it's he who gives every scene he's in a nice flow. Wolff's job is the opposite: in his every scene he's working hard, challenging, provoking, questioning, seducing. In only one ​moment does he go still, and it​'​s a bad sign. Clearly Wolff's a hot young talent and the acting gives too much pleasure for us to worry about a lack of deep emotion and a desultory story line.

​The essential contrast in Coppola's skillful adaptation of the stories is between untrustworthy adult and clueless but innocent youth. On one hand is the older seducer, soccer coach Mr. B. (​James Franco​ himself, whose company Rabbit Bandini also produced). His employment of April as a babysitter for his video-game buff small boy has a transparent ulterior motive: seduction. And she wants this, though when she discovers B.'s kid has a second babysitter from the team who girlfriends have pointed to as beautiful, her focus will shift to ​the rudderless but sweet Teddy, the boy ​April's own age​ who is the natural choice, because he loves her. April is at sea with all this, as a scene with a guidance counselor shows: she has no college plans worked out. ​So there is no dramatic coming together of Teddy and April, and it's the better for being barely stated, only followup text messages​ and telling smiles. Though the film has mostly been notably intense and in-your-face, its excellence is in its also showing a knack for understatement and finding in Emma Roberts and Jack Kilme two actors who can underplay nicely. The movie felt right from the first few minutes, and half way in I was looking forward to watching it all again, and that doesn't happen very often.

Palo Alto, 100 mins., debuted at Telluride August 2013, and is included at Tribeca 24 April 2014. It's the centerpiece film of the San Francisco International Film Festival showing 3 May, and begins a limited US theatrical release by Tribeca Films, 9 May 2014.

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NAT WOLF, JACK KILMER IN PALO ALTO
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