Coppola’s latest draws on filmmaker’s best characteristics, experiences
Rating: A
The writer/director's Oscar-winning "Lost in Translation" is undoubtedly her best portrait of souls locked in a personal crisis, but that doesn't stop "Somewhere," her latest, from feeling like a true gift of a film.
"Somewhere" has all the elements of her most recognizable films — protagonists displaced or anxious about their lives, a single building serving as much of the set, a penchant for extended camera takes — but there's something about its simplicity and honesty that takes it, well, somewhere else.
Stephen Dorff ("Public Enemies (2009)") stars as Johnny Marco, a Hollywood actor with no sense of personal fulfillment. He spends his nights drinking and watching strippers, but the arrival of his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) prompts a gradual rediscovery.
As Johnny and Cleo embark on a publicity tour for Johnny's new film, their transient existence is compounded in the multiple hotels they visit. Beds and furniture may appear the same place to place, but it lacks any kind of personal investment.
It's hard not to imagine Coppola wrote much of the film out of her own experiences traveling with her father, director/producer Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather (1972)," "Apocalypse Now (1979)") in her childhood. In many ways, it's a film without a traditional story and acts more as a gliding meditation on loneliness and existence.
Some may call the film confounding for its lengthy pauses and extended camera takes, but that's part of what makes "Somewhere" seem so pure. Its camera lingers and pans, soaking in its atmosphere.
That's not to say it's a naturalist film. Even though Dorff and Fanning establish stunning chemistry and make their interactions feel bred from a real relationship, Coppola's work is highly constructed. Her compositions are alternately intimate and dynamic, filling the frame with swells of details that seem inconsequential until you let yourself become absorbed in the film.
There are no big revelations, no lengthy speeches or teary breakdowns in "Somewhere." There's no real sense of resolution, but that's perfectly alright because of the sense of fulfillment Coppola provides.
In the tradition of the best filmmakers, the word doesn't hold a candle to the image in her films. She lets her actors and her compositions do the work, and in her minimalist, muted way this ends up making the film more life-affirming and more universal instead of cheapened or melodramatic.
It's been said that Coppola is an esoteric filmmaker, one who's so in love with her own images and her own idea of herself that her work is utterly lost on an audience. To say that is a negative is to miss the beauty of her work.
Yes, her work feels inseparable from her own experience. Yes, she seems to obsess over her images and may be guilty for falling in love with some of them. At the same time, though, that kind of personalized filmmaking is something that's becoming more and more a relic in contemporary American cinema.
Coppola's films are small in budget and scope, but vast and sprawling canvases of human experience. That kind of effect isn't just special, it's beautiful.