Film handles tough topic with care
Made with exquisite care, “Palm Trees and Power Lines” could be the best movie you may not want to watch. But you should if you’re able.
It will trigger some. It ought to disturb anyone who’s not a sociopath. The subject matter is important, but don’t let that scare you away. In the end, “Palm Trees” is everything an American independent film ought to be but rarely is.
Jamie Dack won the drama directing prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and this feature debut — which she also co-wrote and based on her 2018 short film of the same name — is nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, March 4.
That recognition comes not just because of what the movie is about. It’s how personally and naturally this story of a teenage girl seduced, expanded and then reduced by a man twice her age unfolds, how it makes us experience every one of her increasingly manipulated feelings as if they were our own. And with all relevant nuances, spoken or not.
In two of the bravest performances imaginable, newcomer Lily McInerny and TV veteran Jonathan Tucker (“Westworld,” “Kingdom”) play it cool in general, but bring life to every emotion and deception with delicate precision.
She’s Lea, a bored 17-year-old on summer break in her arid Southern California suburb. Lea indeed wanders the scrub beneath power lines, singing along to whatever’s in her earbuds. Some nights there’s bad backseat sex with one of the boys from her circle of high-school drinking buddies. Others are spent watching “Real Housewives” with her single mom Sandra (Gretchen Mol) when she’s not entangled with another guy Lea detests.
Tucker’s Tom gets Lea out of a jam at a diner, charmingly talks her into his twin cab pickup and makes sure she has his number before he drops her off at home. They’re soon going to beaches together and tailgating outside the airport. He says he runs his own small remodeling business, but the only thing in his truck bed is a mattress. Tom runs off at odd times after one of his, um, subcontractors calls.
Like Dack does with her storytelling, Tom takes time to ingratiate himself with Lea. He’s well-built, a little corny, inquisitive about her and supportive in unthreatening ways. Told entirely from the girl’s point of view, the movie envelops us in her fog of love and excitement. We can still see what Lea can’t, the implicating glimpses of this solicitous man’s shadiness, but Tucker will make some of us want to overlook all that. At least until we — and too late, she — can’t deny it.
There’s an agonizing 20-minute stretch in the third act, presented in inescapable real time, that while not graphic leaves nothing to the imagination. With skill actors twice her age would envy, an almost silent McInerny does anguished wonders with Lea’s body language. Loose and unselfconscious through most of the movie, her moves tense and jitter with all kinds of horrible realizations. There are a few tears, but it’s the way she stares at a motel room smoke detector that could kill.
“Palm Trees and Power Lines” feels like an honest story about grooming, which is not only valuable in and of itself but kind of crucial at a time when hatemongers have perverted the concept for political ends. But then, why see a movie that’s good-for-you important and profoundly uncomfortable? Because its humanity and artistry never falter.
Wouldn’t dream of trying to guilt you into seeing it, but that feat is exhilarating.