Palm Trees and Power Lines

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.

Dack seems to have forced a copious personality—whether her own or Lea’s—into a framework that fits it poorly. When the payoff comes, it’s too little and late.

It’s a bold, bleak and unapologetic work exposing inescapable truths about the world, about sex and relationships and power.

This is a movie operating on the principle that the most routine form of this violence isn’t sensational, but subtle.

The kind of movie you watch increasingly through your fingers, not able to look away from what the 17-year-old heroine can’t see or won’t.

Starts off as a depressive snapshot of youthful ennui and soon becomes a stark, harrowing story of predation and abuse.

As far as criticizing the way in which the outside world condemns thee inappropriate relationship that evolves within this film, the script and direction is severely lacking.

This is a delicate drama that tackles grooming and sex trafficking with a deft hand.

When you get to the horrifying climax, it’s both unthinkable and inevitable.

The subject matter is undeniably disturbing, and made more so by the realistic way it's portrayed in Jamie Dack's Palm Trees and Power Lines -- incredibly, the director's first feature film.