The common charge leveled at the Coppola progeny – that they are the beneficiaries of nepotism that not only gets them movie deals but results in films about the insular wealthy – will no doubt be applied to Gia Coppola’s feature debut Palo Alto. Within the first 15 minutes, a high-schooler gets into a hit-and-run while drunk and high, only the court lets him off with customer service because of his family, neighborhood and school connections. But just as these superficial, dismissive readings of Gia’s aunt Sofia’s films miss their formal acumen and thematic nuance, so too does the latest Coppola filmmaker prove capable of digging beneath flat surfaces.
If those in the Coppola clan benefit from family connections, they at least exploit that nepotism to the fullest to actually learn the craft, and the first thing that stands out about Palo Alto is how great it looks. An early shot of April (Emma Roberts) that suddenly pulls focus to reveal a soccer intramural field in the background almost plays as a gag on the prevailing faux-impressionism of indie filmmaking, an immediate shift to deep-focus that the film maintains for its running length. More than most movies solipsistically trained on shiftless teens, Coppola’s debut pays careful attention to the world around the characters, with houses and rooms defined in a crisp objectivity that grounds the action.
By the same token, I can think of no film in which the teenage characters feel so real. Palo Alto, adapted from James Franco’s short story collection, shares a number of traits with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, another film drawn from an adult collecting material from contemporary high-schoolers. April resembles Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character in that film, who is attracted to an older man (in April’s case, the soccer coach played by Franco) but also struggling to articulate her feelings for boys her own age, particularly good-natured stoner Teddy (Jack Kilmer), this film’s Mark. Teddy’s volatile friend Fred (Nat Wolff) is the Mike, an aggressive, delinquent kid whose alpha-male behavior cannot quite mask his deep insecurities.
Emma Roberts as April in Gia Coppola’s “Palo Alto”
But where Fast Times takes these tangible personality traits and transforms them into types, Coppola’s film continues to study them as people. April’s sexual confusion does not come off as a show of experimentation or victimization, instead a natural, if ill-thought-out, attempt to figure out her sexual and romantic desires. Similarly, the film does not lead up to revealing Fred as an unstable loser but makes his dangerous, callous actions a visible component from the start. Fred does not get set up as a tragic head case, but an all-too-familiar aggressor, the sort of boy whose immaturity flits unpredictably between benign inanity and troubling glimpses of how easily he could cross the line into something abhorrent. The camera records him without bias, just as it does everyone, but it picks up on just how little prodding he needs to become a violent person, or a date rapist.
The ostensibly removed position of the camera does not preclude moments of subjectivity, which heighten the relatability of the characters by effortlessly slipping into their POV. At parties, the editing speeds up into a light jumble of glimpses between kids who have feelings for each other but cannot bring themselves to admit it, and even as the lens maintains its distance, certain scenes of Teddy mooning across the way at April brim with anxiety and the agony of trying to work up the courage to make a move on one’s first love.
Similarly, after April and the coach hook up, shots of the following soccer practice hone in on the man’s overly friendly rapport with the rest of the girls, but this insight into his predatory nature is complicated by shots of April looking on, jealous, an acknowledgement of her own torn feelings that only makes Mr. B.’s manipulation of them all the more grotesque.
Palo Alto displays such a keen eye and ear for teenage interaction in all its mingled longing, resentment, brashness and insecurity that the development of various subplots like these can almost seem a distraction from the marvel of a teen film so attuned and empathetic of inchoate emotions. But then, most of these stories concern sexual trysts, and it is true to the teenage experience that dramas are made out of who is and is not having sex, and with whom. One of the pitfalls of teen movies is that their general aimlessness is defended as a faithful rendering of teen angst and uncertainty, a reasonable argument often applied to films with a simple lack of structure.
In Palo Alto, the more plot-driven material often seems rambling, but in the drifting aftermath of events, the ostensible stasis of the characters reveals the first intimations of adulthood. They may not know where they’re going, but these kids are slowly figuring out what they don’t want from life, a lesson in finding oneself that’s all too rare in movies.
