Mark Kermode, Observer film critic 

Palo Alto review – listless portrait of American adolescence

Teenagers drift from one party to the next in Gia Coppola’s uneventful debut, writes Mark Kermode
  
  

Palo Alto, films
Emma Roberts as the ‘awkward heroine’ in Palo Alto. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex

Another week, another glacial outing from the ever-expanding Coppola clan depicting the oh so beautiful emptiness of American teenage wildlife. Based on a collection of short stories by James Franco, who plays a creepy-cool lecherous sports teacher, this debut feature from Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis, niece of Sofia) noodles listlessly from one doped-out party to the next, its pretty vacant characters falling in and out of one another’s arms, cars and pools with studied disaffection. Emma Roberts presents a finely honed portrait of uneasy adolescence as the film’s awkward heroine, but otherwise they’re an unlikable and frequently uninteresting lot – it’s hard to care when drowning seems to threaten one wastrel, but his inevitable Gen X end is altogether more vainglorious. Lacking the exploitative edge of Harmony Korine or Larry Clark, or the sympathetic insight of Sofia Coppola, this settles for middle-of-the-road woozy melancholia – efficiently convincing yet insufficiently intriguing. Val Kilmer (whose son Jack stars) turns up wearing a headscarf and sucking a bong – which seems entirely appropriate.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*