Mainstream opens on Frankie (
Maya Hawke) an aimless twenty-something living in L.A. who bartends to get by but dreams of making it big on YouTube. The film introduces her using text-on-screen in a series of dialogue cards straight out of a movie from the Silent Era, harkening back to a time before everything was so loud. In her sophomore feature succeeding 2013’s
Palo Alto, Coppola returns to the familiar creative breeding ground of disillusioned, self-destructive young people caught in the current of the cultural zeitgeist. This time, the environment is far more ravenous, more cutthroat, as murky suburban melancholy is traded in for neon lights, eye candy emojis, and like buttons. The plight of the young told through the lens of the carnivorous, sense-assaulting modern online influencer culture.