Recent Film: Somewhere

July 1, 2011 in Film, Videos | Permalink

It’s easy to dismiss Sofia Coppola’s work as thin dilettantism, with the plotting generally so spare and the characters so often rich and idle. But it’s unfair and lazy to do so, especially in the case of Somewhere, a gorgeous sliver of a film that almost operates as a poem.

Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is your average Hollywood star, turning out diverting formula films in between an endless summer of casinos, strippers and substances. He’s living hard and looking bad, having checked in for a stay of indeterminate length at the Chateau Marmont. The only semblance of normalcy in his life is his relationship with his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning), who lives with her mom. Cleo is clearly the child of wealth, indulged with endless classes that make her expert at an impressive number of things, but she’s living an exciting life at a time when a stable one would be preferable.

When mom flakes out, Johnny gets full custody of Cleo until summer camp is to start. He’s only half-prepared for the task, providing for Cleo a mix of sweet underwater tea parties and quality time at craps tables. Cleo gets to see too much of the adult world and Johnny gets to see that he’s still really a child.

Coppola is so unusually observant and has such a unique way of creating milieu and communicating her feelings that all her movies are very personally hers. Her characters are often self-pitying and sometimes pitiable, but Coppola knows a secret: All people are exotic, not for the trappings of their lives but because of the traps they fall into. In Somewhere, she consistently reveals that knowledge with deceptive ease.•

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