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Palm Trees and Power Lines

2022

Jamie Dack

Lily McInerny, Jonathan Tucker, Gretchen Mol, Emily Jackson ...

6.5

1,827

Drama A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem.

	Media	Author	Review
		Adrian Horton The Guardian	"[It] boasts a breakout performance for newcomer Lily McInerny (...) Dack has a keen ear for the vacuity and experimental crudeness of teenage conversations (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Owen Gleiberman Variety	"Jamie Dack reveals her trancelike skill as a filmmaker. She frames these two so that we slide back and forth, caught in a gaze that lands somewhere between voyeurism and intimacy"
		Kate Erbland IndieWire	"Dack and her revelatory star teeter through shifting concepts, black and white, yes and no, that only grow more jarring and tense as 'Palm Trees and Power Lines' unfolds."
		Todd McCarthy Deadline	"Dack has expanded her widely admired 2018 short film 'Palm Trees and Power Lines' into a considerably more thorny and disturbing feature of the same title"
		Andrew Crump The Playlist	"'Palm Trees and Power Lines' practically dares viewers to watch what’s happening on screen without flinching"
		Chase Hutchinson Collider	"Lily McInerny is outstanding in [this] emotionally annihilating debut (...) It leaves wreckage in its wake as the psychological and emotional scars linger for us as an audience"
		Barry Hertz The Globe and Mail	"Dack's film refuses to offer tidy answers, pushing the story into uncomfortable places that feel genuine and boundary-challenging"
		Nadir Samara Screen Rant	"'Palm Trees And Power Lines' will break you, put you back together, and then ask how if you're okay in the creepiest voice imaginable (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 5)"
		Jordan Raup The Film Stage	"While the narrative structure can fall into short-turned-debut-feature traps, it works as a blunt cautionary tale and a strong showcase for McInerny in her first feature role"
		Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"Ambitious, torpid, wildly overlong and frustratingly underdeveloped"
		Lovia Gyarkye The Hollywood Reporter	"Palm Trees and Power Lines won’t be for everyone. But the director’s assured approach to a thorny topic (...) and the care with which she treats Lea’s story will linger with me for a long while."
		Phil de Semlyen Time Out	"It's a compelling, edgy story of exploitation with no easy answers (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Peter Howell Toronto Star	"The film forces us to see things Lea's way, past the point of understanding or even toleration but with a truthful depiction of harsh reality (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		Brian Tallerico rogerebert.com	"Powerful (...) A moving breakthrough performance from Lily McInerny (...) It's unsparing in its vision of evil, revealing how mundane it can look to outsiders who aren't willing to really see what’s going to happen"
		Chloe Walker Paste Magazine	"While 'Palm Trees and Power Lines' certainly functions as a cautionary tale, it derives the intensity of its power from the uncomfortable degree to which we're compelled to empathize with Lea"
		Ann Hornaday The Washington Post	"Dack has created a haunting portrait of how trust is manipulated and abused; the trust she builds up with her characters and audience, however, remains steadfast, resulting in a film of disarming candor and power (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		K. Austin Collins Rolling Stone	"A realistic, deeply disturbing portrait (...) A movie operating on the principle that the most routine form of this violence isn't sensational, but subtle"
		Justin Chang Los Angeles Times	"A stark, harrowing story of predation and abuse"
		Roxana Hadadi Vulture	"The relationship McInerny and Tucker build is so convincing in its mixture of exploitation and yearning that 'Palm Trees and Power Lines' capably secures what Lea desires most too: your attention"
		Richard Brody The New Yorker	"Dack seems to have forced a copious personality into a framework that fits it poorly. When the payoff comes, it's too little and late"

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