Coming from a family of famous writers and directors, Gia Coppola has a lot to live up to. Being the niece of Sofia Coppola, and the franddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, filmmaking should surely be a natural route for Gia and PALO ALTO is her first venture into being a writer-director. Adapted from James Franco’s book of short stories Palo Alto, this film is an amalgamation of the overly complicated lives of Californian teens.

The main focus of the film is on four characters: April (Emma Roberts), Teddy (Jack Kilmer), Fred (Nat Wolff), and Emily (Zoe Levin). April is the shy, sweet and innocent teen who is caught up in a world of uncaring parents, brainless and vapid friends, the discovery of love, and exploration of sex. Teddy is an artistic and fairly quiet guy who is brought into drama and risky situations by his estranged best friend Fred. Fred is nihilistic and irrational, often making offensive remarks and doing senseless and harmful things for no apparent reason. Emily is a promiscuous and flirty girl, who uses sex acts as a way to gain validation and acceptance from her peers. Throughout the film, it’s one party after the other and constant pressure to fit in. Fred’s character deteriorates over the course of the film, very quickly spiralling into chaos, whereas April and Teddy have undeclared affection for one another and it takes the whole course of the film for them to finally reach the stage of admittance.

PALO ALTO is primarily a film about teenage angst, and being stuck somewhere between childhood and adulthood. As per usual, the adolescents get the typical speech from the adults telling them to ‘grow up’, and the film heavily remarks how harsh it is for high school age teens, being told they must know immediately who they are and what direction in life they should be going in. This is well pinpointed for both Teddy and April, Teddy being told off by a guidance counsellor, and April is made to feel inadequate when questioned by her college counsellor.

One thing that the film does particularly well is communicating some of the deeper themes and issues these teens face. Above all, Emily communicates the difficulty of the transition between childhood and adulthood. The mise-en-scène of her room displays the typical girly childhood memorabilia of a plethora of teddies and stuffed toys, but we also see lipstick and revealing clothes, two extremes with no in-between. As well as this, Emily’s need for validation through sex is a major problem that many teenagers and adults alike experience. We empathise for Emily when she is teased for being slutty, but she admits during a drinking game that she’s never been in love. Also, in another key scene, we see Emily rinse her mouth with mouthwash after performing fellatio on someone, and as the guy leaves the room Emily has a clearly disappointed look on her face.

There are many interesting themes in PALO ALTO, the main ones being: love, sex, lust, rejection, and loss of innocence.

The tone of the film doesn’t quite pass off the dreamy vibe and doesn’t point to the dreary, over-hyped teenage existence as well as it is communicated by Sofia Coppola’s THE BLING RING, since that film is better paced, and has a much better focus on the teenagers and better emphasis of acceptance on their lives. There are many interesting themes in PALO ALTO, the main ones being: love, sex, lust, rejection, and loss of innocence. The loss of innocence is probably the most prominent, effectively expressed by both April and Emily. One of the more eye-opening scenes would be when April is seen wearing cute days of the week underwear while getting undressed for sex.

PALO ALTO is fairly well shot and edited, but the pacing is sluggish and leaves the film feeling far too disconnected. The performances are what stand out in the film, with Emma Roberts playing a timid character brilliantly, and James Franco conveys his character Mr. B well as he comes across as charming and sincere, when later on in the film it’s clear how predatory he really is. The editing during the sex scene between April and Mr.B is done in such a way that it truly comes off as disturbing, due to the constant cuts to a separate shot of April’s face looking empty and disappointed.

The film as a whole feels far too disjointed; too many events are crammed into the run time leaving the mixture of stories feeling flat, and an inability to care about the characters for too long due to focusing on too many of them at any given time, as well as underdeveloped characters and stories. PALO ALTO very much drives toward style over substance, with it being character driven and staying fairly stagnant on most of the characters’ lives. A lot of the things the characters did, prominently Fred, seemed nonsensical, put in for the sake of looking wild and random. For instance, at the very beginning of the film Fred and Teddy are talking and asking each other weird questions in a car, before Fred needlessly drives into a wall, injuring his friend and satiating his crazy tendencies.

Gia Coppola’s directorial debut is wholly inconsistent, satisfying only to a limited degree and falling short due to the construction of the film and convoluted stories being crammed together too tightly. That being said, some of the characters and events which take place can at times be highly amusing or thought-provoking.

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