Based on Franco's own collection of short stories from 2010, Emma Roberts plays the young student who is the subject of James Franco's advances in Gia Coppola's new film Palo Alto.

Full of adolescent angst and high school shenanigans, Palo Alto seems to be setting itself up as a cross between Lolita and The Virgin Suicides, with teenagers blazing through their final days of love, lust and trouble all under the rose-tinted yet dark Coppola lens.

Having debuted at the Telluride Film Festival last year, critics lauded the film with one even calling it 'one of the best movies ever made about high school life in America'.

Val Kilmer, Nat Wolff and Christian Madsen co-star in the film which is set to open in US cinemas on 9 May with an Irish release date not yet set.