There's something so raw (that sounds really cliched I know but you have to watch it and you'll see there's really no other adjective) about it- Gia Coppola captures the essence of the american teenage angst, lust, confusion and direction-lacking temperaments of a bunch of everymans, of 'normals'- rather than beautiful tanned and size 0 abercrombie models complaining about their boyfriends and trapped in a champagne cage of existence. Yawn.
Palo Alto is fresh, even the name is exciting, even though it's the name of where the film is set, who doesn't love Spanish in a film title. The movie follows the lives of April, Teddy and Fred- plus all of their friends who are intermingled in one way or another. April is played by Emma Roberts, and is nice, kind, but revered as the class virgin. She likes Teddy. Teddy, played by Jack Kilmer, is chilled, laid back but at the beginning of the film gets put on community service in a children's library for DUI. He likes April (of course they don't tell each other this). Fred is loud, boisterous and disliked by many- he's a trouble maker, drinks, smokes and sleeps with girls because he can, with no concern for their feelings. He's a doer, not a thinker like Teddy and April.
It sounds pretty simple, but it's a very sensitively made film- every nuance, subtlety and suggestion is what makes it so great and so watchable; it really defies any preconception of an american film about teenagers. Oh and the soundtrack is AMAzing and will be featured heavily on the September playlist, for sure.
'Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like'
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