Sophia Coppola makes films that are boring, pretentious, indulgent, too concerned with the ennui of the upper class. She is more focused on showing off how hip her music collection is than she is in telling a story. She too blatantly takes her inspiration from some Japanese director, or some Italian director. She didn’t have a normal life. She is Hollywood royalty. What would she know about anything?
It seems to be impossible to review anything that Coppola does without addressing these bullet points in some way. Discussion of Coppola, her life, and what her films say about her as a person can sometimes get so extensive that a critic can all but forget to address the film that he is supposed to be reviewing. I’m not completely certain what it is about the girl that makes people project their opinion of her onto her work more so than most other filmmakers, but it’s there. I guess it’s always hard for family members of legends. For this review I’m going to take the approach of getting all of that stuff out of the way in these first two paragraphs and then going on to concentrate the rest of what I write on the film that I saw. At no point in the following review am I even going to think of a way to segue into a snide remark about how bad she was in The Godfather III.
It seems to be impossible to review anything that Coppola does without addressing these bullet points in some way. Discussion of Coppola, her life, and what her films say about her as a person can sometimes get so extensive that a critic can all but forget to address the film that he is supposed to be reviewing. I’m not completely certain what it is about the girl that makes people project their opinion of her onto her work more so than most other filmmakers, but it’s there. I guess it’s always hard for family members of legends. For this review I’m going to take the approach of getting all of that stuff out of the way in these first two paragraphs and then going on to concentrate the rest of what I write on the film that I saw. At no point in the following review am I even going to think of a way to segue into a snide remark about how bad she was in The Godfather III.
Somewhere is a character study about a celebrity actor named Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) who lives alone in the famous Chateau Marmont hotel instead of, you know, in a house and with a family. His life is resultingly empty and unsatisfying. Probably the most important thing that can be said about this film when explaining it to someone who is yet to see it is that it is very slow-paced and has long stretches where very little happens. Coppola pushes the limits of how much nothing going on you are willing to take. For me, she never crossed that line, I was always engaged with the image on screen and I never got bored; but I feel like she got as close as possible to making that happen without actually doing it. Just one or two more scenes of someone sitting alone in silence doing nothing and I might have found myself frustrated and taken out of the film. For mainstream audiences though, the scenes we get here would probably be more than enough to turn them off and have them stomping out of the theaters in frustration. This is an art film for sure. If that sounds like something that might appeal to you, then I recommend checking this film out. But leave the grandparents at home. Don’t screen this in your Midwest multiplex.
The first bits of the film are used to establish Marco’s current situation and state of mind. The first image we get is of the actor driving an expensive sports car around and around a circular track. The still shot of the car going around in circles holds nearly to the point of madness. Yes, this is a fairly pointed metaphor, maybe a bit too explicit for most critical tastes, but it works on more levels than just telling us that this is a man who is going nowhere fast. It introduces you to the language of the film from its very first moments, and it puts you in the same emotional state as the main character. This is a film that is going to tell you its story through visual metaphor, not through conflict or exposition. Very little will happen, but if you pay attention, there will be quite a bit to see. And if you put yourself in Marco’s shoes and attempt to feel what he feels rather than look at him like a diversion meant to entertain you, Somewhere becomes as engaging an experience as any.
We move on to several scenes of Marco watching blonde twins do pole dance routines in his hotel room. He lays in his bed watching them, giving them his full, undivided attention, yet his dull expression and faraway eyes tell us that even his full attention doesn’t count for much. He looks at them the same way he stares at nothing when we, in another scene, watch him sit on a couch and smoke an entire cigarette. This uninterrupted, still shot of nothing happening harkens back to the opening scene, and there’s several of them during the film’s first act. They’re kind of tough to get through, but without them Coppola wouldn’t be able to so effectively put you in Marco’s head and make you feel the emptiness that he does. He is alone at every moment, or in the company of people who are in his service. He casually engages in booze binges, casual sex, and generally debaucherous behavior; but we can never get a sense of why he does it. Dorff plays all of these scenes 80% detached and 20% sad. He projects a vulnerability here that I’ve never seen from him in anything else. I’m used to him being cocky or evil. This film proves that he can also be relatable.
Every experience we share with the main character leaves us affronted with phoniness and detachment. Life as a Hollywood actor more resembles the life of a pet or a doll than it does a human being. We see Marco take publicity photos with a recent co-star. They can’t stand to be around each other, but they cuddle, smile, and gaze into each other’s eyes nonetheless. Watching them cavort in such a false way feels more awkward and cold than if they would have just blown up on each other and had a confrontation. That Dorff spends the scene standing on a wooden platform to enhance his height manages to enhance the absurdity and humiliation of the scene more so than it does his masculinity. Here in the world of entertainment everything is image and artifice masking degradation. The Chateau Marmont, for all of its infamy, doesn’t even seem to be a very nice hotel. The décor is out of date; the furniture looks a bit ragged. I get the sense that this is a business surviving on tradition and reputation alone. Their reputation as being a place where wild Hollywood parties occur is enough to keep them in business, but it has left the hotel looking like a worn out party den naturally would. I can’t help but draw a parallel between the setting and our coasting, partied out protagonist. They seem to be a direct reflection of each other.
Perhaps the peak of this first section of the film is a scene in which a mold is taken of Marco’s face in order to create aging makeup effects for his next big movie. He sits still as a couple of techs spread white goop all over his head with their hands. After he is covered completely, minus a couple tiny holes to breathe out of his nose with, the effects guys leave the room, and Marco finds himself sitting alone once again; this time looking more alien then anything human. We sit with him for quite a while, the soundtrack silent other than his labored breathing. At this moment his isolation and the falseness of his life is complete. This is the moment where Dustin Hoffman seeks refuge at the bottom of his parent’s pool in The Graduate. Something has to give, because life as it is has become too dire for our protagonist. In The Graduate new experience and connection comes in the form of an affair with an older woman. For Johnny Marco it comes when his 11 year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) shows up at the doorstep of his hotel room with the news that she has to stay with him for a couple weeks.
Once before his daughter shows up we get a sense that Marco might be searching for something. While aimlessly driving around in his Ferrari he pulls up next to a beautiful woman in a convertible. This isn’t the usual groupie and hanger-on that we usually see him with. She looks like a career woman, a success at something. The blank look that we’ve become accustomed to on Dorff’s mug changes to intrigue and curiosity. Does he sense something of worth in her? He follows her up in the hills, it doesn’t seem like he knows what he plans to do, and before he can make any sort of contact with her she pulls into a driveway and a gate closes behind her. Dejected, he turns around and drives back the way he came. We get this awakening in his expression once more when he takes his daughter to her ice skating lessons. He sits in the stands, slumped and blank, projecting his usual disimpassioned Johnny Marco persona, but slowly we watch him as he begins to notice the beauty and grace of his daughter’s movements. His face comes alive, not unlike when he sees the well put-together woman in the convertible. He seems to have a legitimate appreciation for what his daughter does, he’s excited at the notion of talent. This is the opposite of the way he acts when he watches the awkward, white girl dancing of the pole routine twins. The twins are beautiful, to be sure, but there is little skill displayed by their simple, clumsily performed routines. His response to them is empty, condescending. You wonder why he has them perform in his room at all. Is it out of obligation? Is he merely mimicking what he thinks it is to be a celebrity? Or is it out of loneliness? Is paying someone to come to his room the only way he knows how to reach out? In the scene where he watches his daughter skate there seems to be an idea that gets lit up inside of him, whether it is just him connecting with a small sense of what it means to be a human being or if it is him realizing that spending time with family can be a way to combat loneliness isn’t clear, and I’m not sure Marco knows exactly what he is feeling either. But it’s in this scene that we begin to go from watching just a portrait of a static caricature to watching the beginnings of a developing and changing character.
Though I’ve seen a couple of the films that Elle Fanning has been in already, I wasn’t actually aware of her existence until I saw her in this. She is charming and capable and full of life and light in this role. Cleo’s presence in her father’s life works as a lightning rod to pick him up out of the stereotypical Hollywood stupor that he has found himself in and imbue him with a little bit of energy. What the character is able to do for her father, Fanning also does for the film. Before she shows up we’re watching a very slow paced, minimal portrait of a slowly decaying celebrity, and after she shows up we get to watch that stagnant character engage, and learn, and cope, and form connections. Just when you think that maybe Somewhere is going to be far too much of a downer to get through, Fanning saves the day. We get a couple of scenes that you would imagine a story about a father and daughter connecting would have to include, we get a bonding montage, the girl cries, the father regrets, but Coppola’s strength as a writer lies in her ability to create very small, specific moments between two characters and make them take on a universally understood meaning, rather than going for the big melodramatic moments that other character pieces might feel the need to include. There’s no scene here where Marco messes up the new relationship and the daughter storms out, leaving him to wallow for a bit and then vow to get her back. There’s no big, aggrandized climax where he is forced with choosing between his career and his daughter. Instead their relationship lives in those same quiet moments that Johnny inhabited alone during the film’s first act, but the fact that she is present transforms them. Now, when he is put in the type of absurd, phony situations that only a big time actor could find himself in, instead of facing them with a shameful slump he looks at Cleo and they share an eye roll and a smirk. There’s a scene I particularly liked where they share a posh Italian hotel room together after they fly out for an awards show. After Cleo falls asleep, Johnny calls some random skank to come over for a little tomfoolery, and the next morning they find themselves all together at the breakfast table. The woman is vapid and any notion that her being around would be a good idea that Johnny had in the heat of the night has clearly vanished. Cleo is annoyed with the woman and Fanning plays it so well that I couldn’t help but be impressed. Her disapproval of the situation is clearly projected, but not overstated or hammy. Her annoyance is subtle and funny. We get it, and Johnny gets it, but the bimbo at the table is completely oblivious. The scene impressed me both because of Fanning’s beyond her years performance, and because of the trust that Coppola puts in us as an audience. She understands that we understand what’s happening in the scene, and that we don’t need it spelled out for us. We see Cleo’s disappointment, and we get a hint of Johnny’s hangdog shame, but nothing else is said about the matter. It is a moment between two people that deepens their relationship, and we get to experience it; in other hands this scene would have just been written and acted as a flashpoint for drama. A call back to the still, actionless scenes of the first act comes a bit later and I was impressed by it as well. After a brief montage of father daughter stuff set to a slowed down version of The Strokes song ‘You Only Live Once’ that is dreamy, warm, and spectacular, we get a shot of the duo laying out next to the Marmont pool. Johnny is staring off into the distance no longer because he is an empty void; it’s now because he’s lying by a pool, drinking in the sun, and sharing a quiet moment with his daughter. It’s a sublime moment that I wish could have lasted forever and it is in stark contrast to the grating nature of the quiet scenes at the beginning of the film. It isn’t so much what we do for each other that makes having relationships so essential, sometimes the simple act of being there is enough. Presence trumps emptiness, and that’s enough of a truth for a film to explore. There doesn’t always have to be a court case or a chase to the airport to make us feel empathy.
The climax that we get instead is just a brief showing of emotion. We see Johnny’s defenses crack, a sensation finally peaks through his numb exterior, and we hear him verbalize for the first time what it is he is going through. It comes right after we get a similar scene from Fanning, who lets her dad in on her thoughts and fears, and squeezes out a couple of tears herself. Neither scene is dramatic or showy, they’re not brought about by any sort of major happening given to us by the plot; they’re just tiny moments experienced by two people that are imbued with meaning for us because their lives have been so effectively presented that we feel we have come to know them. I don’t want to give away the ending explicitly, but it’s pretty easy to imagine. We get another visual metaphor. When we open the film we get the image of a lost man driving nowhere, and in the end we find a man who has learned a little bit about courage from his daughter engaging in an activity that get’s us to our film’s title. It’s a pretty blunt, on the nose sequence that I can see turning a lot of people off. For a film that is so minimal in it’s plotting and performance, subtlety in message isn’t quite it’s strong suit. But I don’t know if that’s really a valid criticism. I guess it all worked for me. It never felt hacky. Every bit of message and meaning that you can take away from this film needs to be inferred; nothing is explicated. Is it a fault in Coppola that she is able to so effectively convey meaning through metaphor? Is a little muddiness more intellectually satisfying? Maybe. But that’s not the film that this is. There is a contentment you feel when you get to that sunbathing scene. You’ve met a person, shared his experiences, and felt a connection. That’s all a story needs to accomplish to be a success from where I’m sitting.
Staring off into the distance.
