Paper Towns

Paper Towns

Paper Towns is the second feature by Jake Schreier. A year before I got the movie -entretenida and well told, go for front of him that he had already drawn the attention of literary criticism the novel of the same title by John Green signed published in English in 2008. The title? Paper Towns refers to nonexistent cities invented by cartographers to preserve the copyright for possible copies of their work and facing potential lawsuits. Schreier read the novel, liked it and commissioned Fox to direct the film adaptation (with some surprises on the original text).

Until then, Schreier, a young director who had left good memories with his fable A friend Frank (2012), perhaps one of the best performances you've starred Frank Langella in his long film career. Since then Schreier, accustomed to directing short films, music videos and commercials, he had not repeated a feature film and there remained the question of whether that lovely film was an accidental success or if the manager had "wood" to revalidate. And he has it. Paper Towns has made clear. Both films are comedies with drama and a sediment is at least curious that the main characters of the first film was an old man and his robot and this comes to us now, a young couple. In both cases, poignant and vital Schreier braid ribbons.

To understand the scenario that develops paper cities would be desirable to see before the documentary The End of Suburbia (2004) filmed by Gregory Greene and produced in Canada. In American slang expression "suburbia" the whole swarm of developments, far from the center of large cities, which were built after World War II and whose houses veterans returning from conflict surrendered. Thereafter they proliferated such developments to be inherent to the American dream ... until gasoline prices soared. The central theme of the film is precisely that of a young inhabitant of "suburbia", son of the city design that embodies the American dream.

Not the first time that American cinema is the subject of "suburbia". A part of that documentary films like Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and Two Jackes (1990) that counted respectively starring Jack Lemon and Jack Nicholson, recorded a plot against the background of "suburbia". Similarly, The Goonies (1995) would be the translation in youth version. Even the punk cinema (or presumed such) offered us a film that is beginning to sense the degradation of life in these areas (Suburbia, 1984).

These comfort zones singularly allow the adventures and love. There is some inability of parents to control and maintain tied to their children; its relations with them just limited to breakfast cereals and taking them to school. Beyond this, parents ignore all of their children, are safe in the environment of "suburbia"; are there free from all evil. The film tells the story of a young man attracted to another girl her age; she is brilliant, captivating, exercises for him the role of "initiatory lady" that drives him to leave his area and and comfort discover him, he's a Ninja ... so hard to life as the steel of a sword, even when surrounded persons resident in the chaos. The role is played by Cara Delevingne, whose face we will have to get used to seeing in the coming years as "fashion girl". In the film, the Delevingne is a true "queen bee" from his high school.

His masculine replica assumes Nat Wolff whose films so far, covering a dozen titles in supporting roles (the first when still had not fulfilled the ten years). This is his first film as a protagonist. Like his co-star, just choose the titles they know and who do not pass the "dark side" that has frustrated so many careers in Hollywood, actors are called to emphasize in the coming years, especially her.

The writer John Green tried to convey something Schreier has managed to prevail in the screenplay: the feeling that, contrary to what tends to think, the inhabitants of "suburbia", far from being simple, simple, natural and comfortable, as the landscapes in which they live, are, however, unusually complicated and twisted. The male protagonist is obsessed with finding the woman; is abandoned by the five friends (the number five seems a number that recurs repeatedly in novels and movies of this kind: see The Adventures of The Five (2013), not forgetting that five are also the Goonies that count), it is misunderstood by those who were part of their environment. What happens when the woman is (and how is) belongs to the secret of this film that this review is obliged not to reveal.

The transition from adolescence to maturity always leaves a bittersweet. We've all experienced this feeling in the first part of our life. Any change of state, as spending butterfly worm, can not be done without a strong emotional shock, a crisis. Such is the path that we all must bear. So, surely, this movie seems so close and generates an echo within us that many viewers will be able to perceive.

The film is not recommended for lovers of strong emotions and special effects. It is quiet, relaxed, with blows of humor, leisurely flowing at a rate that makes it extremely enjoyable to watch. Photography by David Good Lanzenberg. The perfect casting (we have said that both major players will talk about for years to come). Music, correct, but without getting any chorus reminding us out.

I know that some viewers are reluctant to see a film that comes from the United States and try to adolescents. Too many films of young people in high-schools to graduate or university desmadrados plated vulgarity, too young and too many vampire movies teen movies that are limited to four hooligans acts five apricots jokes, and some clones arguments, true incentives to defect of the cinemas ... at least as regards demanding public.

This film is different: it draws the viewer lessons and conclusions (as control obsessions and sometimes need to take a step back to see new possibilities). The argument does not place its axis in the rough, pedestrian or rude, but in the power of friendship and understanding how to deal with change of state of adolescence to maturity. Graduation and prom is this existential cut that marks a before and after in the life of a young man.

Rating: 7