Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere:" It's Not Nothing

Sofia Coppola's fourth film, a father-daughter take on "Lost in Translation" at the Chateau Marmont, has screened at Venice and is apparently neither a big step forward nor a big step back. There's an expectation for artists in general that each successive work should be notably stronger than the last. This is especially true for filmmakers, with the complex financial risks involved in making artistic and commerical ends meet holding such high stakes.


If your last movie bombed, the next one is fundamentally branded as a comeback: look at Darren Aronofsky, who bounced back from the abysmal commercial and critical reception of "The Fountain" with a quintessential underdog tale, "The Wrestler." "The Fountain," an abstract art piece with no apparent concern for commercial appeal or return on investments, bombed horribly at the box office in 2006 after numerous release delays, yet over time it has become widely regarded by cinephiles as a modern masterpiece.  "The Wrestler" hit the ground running within hours of its 2008 Venice premiere, positioning Mickey Rourke as the instant frontrunner for Best Actor and sealing his fate as a classic Hollywood Comeback Kid, which made Aronofsky's Golden Lion victory at fest's end icing on the cake. Fox Searchlight snapped up distribution rights and made $26 million domestically against a $6 million budget...BOOM. Aronofsky, back in the game. Only time will tell where he'll go after the rousing early success of "Black Swan," but I digress...

Walking and talking with "Lost in Translation" star Bill Murray

Following her historic Oscar coup for "Lost in Translation" (she won for Best Original Screenplay, a brilliant, unpretentious character study that somehow pulled back layer upon layer of complexity writ large; and was also nominated for Best Directing - only the third woman in history - and for Best Picture, as producer), Sofia Coppola chilled her jets for a year or so, wisely, before beginning work on her follow-up...

"Marie Antoinette" was an unconventional choice from the outset, a completely interior telling of the infamous teen queen of France who was ultimately beheaded by a mob of citizens for the debt she incurred to maintain a lavish life of leisure, which she continued living even as the country fell to ruin around her. Coppola went further, setting most scenes in traditional Versaille aesthetic while imbuing the entire production with New Wave music and a quintessentially postmodern attitude of angsty ennui.

It premiered at Cannes in 2006 to reported boos and jeers from the French crowd; though the reaction was widely confirmed as exaggerated by media outlets internationally, "Marie Antoinette"'s reputation was finished before summer even began, leaving a nearly six month gap between the Cannes huballoo and the film's commercial release.

It never recovered in the court of public opinion, despite the fact that the movie broke even internationally and garnered a small legion of instant fans. Critics were split, as is always expected when considering such a polarizing interpretation of history. Coppola took a calculated risk with "Marie Antoinette" and simply did not knock it out of the park commercially or with critics. She would have to pay for it by scaling down the scope and ambition of anything she considered next, and so she did.

For what it's worth (not much), "Marie Antoinette" and "The Fountain" are both among my Top 10 of 2006, and both films revealed complexity and strength of vision upon repeat viewings, growing better and better with age. That is the truest marker of cinematic excellence I can think of, when a movie proves you wrong after a reproachful first impression.

It's been four years since "Marie Antoinette" dared play dress up with ancient history, and so once again Sofia Coppola has cooled her jets and taken time to deliver her next project. "Somewhere" struck me immediately as dangerously similar to "Lost in Translation," though the stunt casting of Stephen Dorff suggested something greater in play.  Dorff cannily riffs on his own celebrity, playing a washed up movie star holed up in the Chateau Marmont waiting for something, anything to happen.

That something comes in the form of his wide-eyed preteen daughter (Elle Fanning, younger than Dakota but cut from the same talented cloth), who arrives in her father's life at just the right moment for the pair to find themselves in each other.

Coppola on the set of "Somewhere" with director of photography Harris Savides

Coppola isn't veering outside the box here; her favorite themes (the private fears of public figures, parallel coming-of-age arcs between platonic older man/younger woman, geographic dislocation, loneliness even while surrounded by one of the biggest cities in the world, etc.) are just as present here as in her last two films.

Perhaps "Somewhere" wouldn't seem like such a "Lost" redux had "Marie" not been so prettied up in all that lace and frosting, distracting superficially from its existential weight and making otherwise obvious similarities to its Oscar-winning predecessor sink beneath the surface of  luxurious facade.  It is that very quality that makes "Marie Antoinette" such a brilliant movie, the style and production design Coppola employs to evoke the interior life of her character are in perfect lockstep with the lifestyle and mindset of history's most notorious teen queen.

Right out of the gate in Venice, "Somewhere" has shown impressive traction with critics. There are a  typical few who have regarded the film with a shrug and a "meh" since before it even went into production, and as expected their reports of the film's reception have been muted. The consensus, though, is that Sofia C. hasn't attempted any giant leap forward and in doing so, in keeping her parameters simple and her approach casually intimate, she has crafted a modest stunner. Perhaps, I can't help thinking, the sort of film whose true colors reveal themselves in greater depth over time.

Variety calls the film "a quiet heartbreaker," predicting a tidy box office success from the director's usual upscale fanbase when Focus releases the picture late in December. The Evening Standard sums it up nicely, praising "Somewhere" with typically British reserve: "This quiet and restrained portrait ... is not the noisy showbiz chronicle other directors might well have made it ... Anyone expecting fireworks from Coppola after the lavish and controversial Marie Antoinette will be disappointed with Somewhere ... But it may last in the memory a little more than Marie Antoinette, if not quite as long as Lost In Translation."  

The online hipster mag Vulture has come out firmly in favor of the quintessentially hip auteur, proclaiming her talent to be definitely intact despite the publication's affinity for celebrity snark: "Early Somewhere Reviews: Sofia Coppola's Still Got It!" So long as Brooklyn, Silver Lake and Portland are on board, as Vulture's endorsement all but ensures, "Somewhere" is sure to find an audience in no time. Here's the trailer, cut to Sofia's usual hipster mixtape: