There were two things that hooked me when I first saw Palm Trees and Power Lines, an unnerving portrait of the grooming of a teenage girl, at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. First, that the film, which is finally getting limited and on-demand release this week in the US, was one of most evocative depictions of suburban adolescence that I’d seen – a languid summer of couch hangs and knobby knees, afternoon ice cream and sex jokes, a whole lot of lying around and talking about nothing. And second, that the portrayal of the relationship between 17-year-old Lea, played by the 22-year-old yet younger-looking Lily McInerny, and 34-year-old Tom, played by a convincingly thirtysomething Jonathan Tucker, was a remarkably tricky balancing act, one that has stuck with me for over a year.
Writer/director Jamie Dack’s feature debut accomplishes a fraught double vision: you can see, in the film’s entrancing first act, why Lea is attracted to Tom, a construction contractor she first encounters at a late-night diner. You can also see he’s manipulating her. Lea is bored and isolated, frustrated with her working single mother and the tight hems of her world. Tom has a car and a job and answers to no one. He takes her fledgling interests – in singing, in worrying about the future, in herself – seriously. The boys she hangs around, who crudely rank attractiveness and fumble at sex in the backseat of a car, are fresh-faced and adolescent-metabolism thin. Tom has muscles and moves with assurance. He’s a thrill, his attention both intoxicating and validating. He’s also clearly, to anyone watching, ridden with red flags. (Lea can see it a little, too – she hides the truth from her friends, who half-jokingly call him a “perv”.)
