Filmmaker Jamie Dack discusses the making of Palm Trees and Power Lines, a hyper-realistic tale of a 17-year-old girl who is groomed into being sex trafficked
“That really takes me out of it,” she says. “It feels so false to me when I’m watching TV or films that have that in the casting, and I very consciously decided that she was going to be under 18, so I needed her to look that age. I know it’s disturbing, but that’s the point. If you’re watching actual teenagers who look like their age have sex on a show, that’s completely different than having actors in their twenties and thirties.
“I could see that I was making choices that a male director wouldn’t have made,” she maintains. “And yet people were so disturbed by my film. I understand it’s disturbing, but there were also times where I thought, all I’m doing is putting you in the perspective of this teenage girl and for some reason you can’t handle it. Others have done similar scenes to the most disturbing scene in my film and been a lot more violent and graphic, and people tolerate it differently. It’s interesting.
Dack and her actors spent a day shooting the scene, which was initially shot in a continuous 10-minute take. The version that made the film is considerably shorter but feels endless. We see a much older man enter the room. Lea is terrified. He talks her off the ledge, before placing her hand on his crotch. Then, he has sex with her. The camera moves in on her face, and then the room’s smoke alarm, which Lea focuses on as she disassociates. A single tear travels down her face.
She pauses. “People are disturbed by being in her perspective, and for that scene we place the camera outside of her perspective for that wide shot. Sometimes what you hear behind a closed door is more disturbing than seeing it versus being up-close and graphic. It plays out in real time and doesn’t cut.”
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