Two of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s most anticipated films — The Centerpiece Film Palo Alto and the World Premiere of Last Weekend — both deal with the woes of the rich. They’re also made by Hollywood royalty: writer-director Gia Coppola, who directed Palo Alto” is the grand-daughter of director Frances Ford Coppola and Tom Dolby, who co-directed The Last Weekend, is the son of Ray Dolby. Both films feature some great performances, which soften these otherwise frustratingly privileged characters: more money, more problems. Here’s a first look at both films.
Last Weekend
So much great acting is wasted on this pointless film about the woes of the very rich. When an aging matriarch (Patricia Clarkson, radiant) decides to sell her summer house in Tahoe for no good reason – they don’t need the money but somehow the sale will make them better people – she invites her adult sons and their partners home for a last Labor Day weekend. There’s insight here about how the children manage their respective issues. The eldest son, Theo (Zachary Booth), brings home a working-class boyfriend, Luke (Devon Graye), perhaps as a buffer or to make a statement, and finds himself almost having to deal with the fact that he also brought a person who might not be impressed by Theo’s unchecked privilege. The younger son is reeling from a recent business mistake and finds himself taking it out on his family by acting with inflated self-righteousness. I was reminded throughout of Olivier Assayas’s significantly better film, Summer Hours, which also concerns the sale of a summer house so tied to childhood memories, but where the characters in Assayas’s film acted with poise and maturity, those in Last Weekend come off petty and often annoying.
Screens May 2 @ 6:30PM at the Sundance Kabuki and May 5 @ 1PM at New People Cinema. Directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams, as well as several cast-members will attend the May 2 screening.
Palo Alto
For a film that takes its title from the California suburb, Palo Alto, it couldn’t be less geographically specific. It doesn’t even look like Palo Alto as it was shot outside Los Angeles. Based on the book of short stories by James Franco, writer-director Gia Coppola has crafted a film about the moments – and mistakes – that define adolescence. What Coppola gets right is how the teenagers find themselves in situations without necessarily purposefully getting themselves there, whether it’s engaging in sexual relations or falling in with the wrong friends, because they were too insecure to go for what they really wanted. Yet the idea that the children of the rich are under-parented and oversexed is hardly a new one: the television series Gossip Girl handled it with intelligence and nuance, always contextualizing the behaviour. Coppola’s film is mostly concerned with romanticizing the stupidity of adolescence: smoking with friends, dancing at parties, inappropriate sex. Just because the kids can’t make sense of their acting out doesn’t mean the film shouldn’t try to.
Screens May 3 at 7:30PM at the Sundance Kabuki. All advance tickets are sold out, but you can join the rush line to gain last-minute entry. Writer-Director Gia Coppola will be in attendance.
