Is this a music video? A sneaker commercial? No, it's a poignant drama about the pain, angst, and heartbreaking beauty of the teenage years!
The writer/director is Francis Ford Coppola's granddaughter. The male lead is Val Kilmer's son. The female lead is Julia Roberts' niece. Keep it in the family, guys!
As you might expect given the cast, PALO ALTO is an exercise in vanity, more fashion propaganda than narrative. Rather than using the camera to go beyond the narcissism of her characters, Coppola uses it to shore it up. On the level of explicit content the film is a perfectly honorable drama about teenage life, but on the level of diegetic form the film is a refusal of the depth constitutive of drama in favor of surfaces. Now, I've read my Hegel. I know that form and content determine each other mutually. These young punks are just too cool. Their clothes, poses, attitudes, and thoughts have no substance beyond this contentless coolness and as such they constitute an active refusal of subjectivity proper. Not only does Coppola leave their posturing untouched, she validates it. These boring and unfree adolescents wander around under the gaze of a director who is so seduced by the spectacle of raw teenage authenticity that she cannot bring herself to help them by offering them access to a NO that might liberate them a little. In this she is a perfect dupe for our corrupt consumerist culture which substitutes objects and postures for the emancipatory potential of Logos and subjectivity.
Some concrete examples: April sitting in her locker is a detail worthy of the castrated twee peddler Wes Anderson. The scene in the skate park towards the end..."if you thought 17-year-olds were cool, wait until you see how raw and real and cool 14-year-olds are!"
Every character is desperately in need of some intervention from without, some access to something beyond the stifling, repressive world of appearances and "fun", and Coppola refuses to give it to them, because to do so would extract them from the authentic-y angst that makes these teens so raw and cool.
Of course, the film was made when Coppola was only twenty-five years old. This is far too young to be given this kind of creative control. Like her aunt, Coppola has nothing to say. All she knows how to do is project her own life onto the screen. There is no authentic artistic vision here, just vanity turbo-charged by the absurd sums of money these people have access to.
At the end of the credits, there is a "The director would like to thank..." section in which she shouts out every cool brand, band, actor and director that inspired her. What kind of monster is inspired by a brand? The list is super long and betrays the nature of the universe in which Gia Coppola lives. It is the world of money and marketing...nothing more.
The writer/director is Francis Ford Coppola's granddaughter. The male lead is Val Kilmer's son. The female lead is Julia Roberts' niece. Keep it in the family, guys!
As you might expect given the cast, PALO ALTO is an exercise in vanity, more fashion propaganda than narrative. Rather than using the camera to go beyond the narcissism of her characters, Coppola uses it to shore it up. On the level of explicit content the film is a perfectly honorable drama about teenage life, but on the level of diegetic form the film is a refusal of the depth constitutive of drama in favor of surfaces. Now, I've read my Hegel. I know that form and content determine each other mutually. These young punks are just too cool. Their clothes, poses, attitudes, and thoughts have no substance beyond this contentless coolness and as such they constitute an active refusal of subjectivity proper. Not only does Coppola leave their posturing untouched, she validates it. These boring and unfree adolescents wander around under the gaze of a director who is so seduced by the spectacle of raw teenage authenticity that she cannot bring herself to help them by offering them access to a NO that might liberate them a little. In this she is a perfect dupe for our corrupt consumerist culture which substitutes objects and postures for the emancipatory potential of Logos and subjectivity.
Some concrete examples: April sitting in her locker is a detail worthy of the castrated twee peddler Wes Anderson. The scene in the skate park towards the end..."if you thought 17-year-olds were cool, wait until you see how raw and real and cool 14-year-olds are!"
Every character is desperately in need of some intervention from without, some access to something beyond the stifling, repressive world of appearances and "fun", and Coppola refuses to give it to them, because to do so would extract them from the authentic-y angst that makes these teens so raw and cool.
Of course, the film was made when Coppola was only twenty-five years old. This is far too young to be given this kind of creative control. Like her aunt, Coppola has nothing to say. All she knows how to do is project her own life onto the screen. There is no authentic artistic vision here, just vanity turbo-charged by the absurd sums of money these people have access to.
At the end of the credits, there is a "The director would like to thank..." section in which she shouts out every cool brand, band, actor and director that inspired her. What kind of monster is inspired by a brand? The list is super long and betrays the nature of the universe in which Gia Coppola lives. It is the world of money and marketing...nothing more.