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PALM TREES AND POWER LINES
Director: Jamie Dack Cast: Lily McInerny, Jonathan Tucker, Gretchen Mol, Quinn Frankel, Timothy Taratchila, P.K. Simone MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:50 Release Date: 3/3/23 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 1, 2023 To be a teenager is to be uncertain of yourself, your place in the world, your relationships with friends and family, and your basic comprehension of your own worth. In Palm Trees and Power Lines, that's the case with Lea (Lily McInerny), who says she's 17 and is right on the cusp of some big changes in her life. She needs guidance, perhaps, or some advice, at least, but instead, she ends up meeting, befriending, and attaching herself to a man who's twice her age. He's not out to help her. Co-writer/director Jamie Dack's film isn't just some cautionary tale about how someone like Tom (Jonathan Tucker), the older man, can prey on someone like Lea. It is that story, to be sure, but it's more concerned with seeing the teenage girl as more than a victim, even if the film's climactic scene might overcompensate for how restrained the rest of the story is in letting us know she is one. We understand what lures Lea to this man. If the steps and circumstances surrounding that relationship seem simple, that's what makes the whole situation so frightening. Lea is on summer break from school when we first meet her. Her mother Sandra (Gretchen Mol) raises the girl on her own, and when she isn't working, Sandra is preoccupied with several men who seem to leave her heartbroken each and every time. Lea has a few acquaintances, although Amber (Quinn Frankel) might be the only one she could call a real friend, but one particular moment, in which Lea lies about needing to help her mom in order to leave a party, gives us a sense of how left out she feels among this crowd. Dack and co-screenwriter Audrey Findlay establish all of this and more about Lea, so when Tom enters her life, it doesn't take much for him to take advantage of her. He saves her from a dine-and-dash situation, offers her a ride home, comes across as kind and concerned about Lea's worries in accepting that offer, and gets her phone number after convincing her. The two spend more and more time together, and it becomes increasingly clear that Tom is trying to control her. Lea just wants some attention and affection. Because what Tom is doing looks like those things from a certain perspective, she doesn't realize what has gone wrong until it's too late—if, as a haunting epilogue suggests, she even realizes it in the first place. Palm Trees and Power Lines is unsettling in how ordinary all of this, from Lea's personal troubles to the way Tom's attitude and behavior escalate, feels. Dack's restraint in letting us see the little details of how all of this could and, as Tom isolates the girl from everything and everyone else, will go wrong is commendable. Some questions, then, arise on account of the film's most harrowing scene, but the impact of it, as well as the troubling coda, is undeniable. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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