While talking to Sofia Coppola, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that the conversation could just as easily have taken place in one of her movies. Her soft-spoken delivery mixed with a hint of timidity makes it easy to see where the quiet, revealing situations in “Lost in Translation” or “Marie Antoinette” come from. Add actor Stephen Dorff to the conversation and you basically have a possible scene from Coppola’s latest film, “Somewhere.”
Dorff stars as Johnny Marco, a Hollywood superstar stumbling through his life of gluttony at Los Angeles’ famed Chateau Marmont. He’s basically that actor we all know from the tabloids, the one who’s never out of the public eye thanks to the latest batch of embarrassing photos courtesy of such media outlets as TMZ. It doesn’t take long to begin drawing comparisons to some of your favorite leading men in Hollywood.
After illustrating Johnny’s world of Ferraris, women and pills, the film takes off when he is given the opportunity to care for Cleo (Elle Fanning), his young daughter from a failed marriage. Their encounters with each other encourage Johnny to reexamine his life at a pivotal juncture.
It’s difficult not to think of “Lost in Translation” while watching “Somewhere,” but Coppola departs from her past work by taking some much-needed risks. The absence of an A-list celebrity cast mixed with a low budget (by Hollywood standards) frees the movie from unnecessary baggage. “We were working under the radar and didn’t have superstars, so we could move around and do our thing,” said Coppola. “After ‘Marie Antoinette,’ which had so many costumes and extras, it was liberating to have a smaller crew. This was the most low-stress, pleasant shoot I’ve ever had.”
Coppola’s willingness to experiment with pacing and editing has been key to her success since her first film, “The Virgin Suicides,” but she goes a step further in “Somewhere.” Scenes that take place in real time aid in what Coppola describes as an attempt at making the audience “feel like you’re alone with this guy, and his in-between stages where no one is telling him where to go or what to do.” She further added, “The pacing is meant to make you feel like you’re really with him. I didn’t want (the audience) to be aware of the filmmaking, so you can just be there with the character.”
The realistic nature of the film is a testament to Coppola’s pacing. Not only are the motivations and actions of the characters believable, but the emotions also feel honest. Instead of forcing her characters to change due to some extraordinary event, Coppola allows some of Johnny’s unresolved issues to remain, while still giving the audience a hint that the future could prove hopeful.
The father-daughter relationship between Johnny and Cleo could have easily ended up as melodramatic, sentimental dribble, but the film keeps away from this trap by examining the characters at face value. Take a look at one of the early scenes from the film, where Johnny observes his daughter as she ice skates. With no dialogue, slow pacing and Gwen Stefani’s “Cool” playing in the background, Coppola establishes the dynamic that exists between father and daughter. Like most child-parent relationships, Coppola shows Cleo’s attempts to gain her father’s approval without resorting to the climactic moments that constitute a Hollywood cliche. This reflects Coppola’s intention to highlight the importance of subtle interactions.
“What you try to do is, try to show a point of view that someone might not otherwise see,” Coppola explained. “I want to tell their stories, imagining what it’s like for that person at a point of transition in their lives. On ‘Somewhere,’ I wanted to be in Johnny’s head.”
Written and directed by Coppola after the birth of her first child, the film offers more proof that she embodies the definition of auteur in its most basic sense. “In everything I do there’s a personal connection. Your life experiences are going to inform what you write about,” she says. “After ‘Lost in Translation,’ this is my only other original screenplay. I feel that those movies are more personal than ones based on a book or something else, because you fill them with your own experiences and thoughts. I admire personal filmmaking, movies that come from a point of view unique to that person making it. So I try to do that. I try to make personal films.”
Her experiences as the daughter of directing legend Francis Ford Coppola particularly inform “Somewhere,” giving the audience an insider’s glimpse into a world that is often fantasized and gossiped about. “The character of Cleo is based on my memories of having a powerful father that people are attracted to being around and having a dad who did things that were kind of out of the ordinary,” she explained. “It’s not all me, but there’s things from my childhood.”
Although she is a member of a growing class of mainstream American directors pushing for the right to act as both writer and director, Coppola sets herself apart by returning to the character study format that she first experimented with in “Lost in Translation.” The return also signals a recovery of the kind of intimate tone and storyline that made “Lost in Translation” so appealing when Coppola was still considered an up-and-coming filmmaker.
As her fourth feature-length film, “Somewhere” illustrates Coppola’s growth and confidence as a filmmaker, while also challenging those critics that questioned her staying power following the success of “Lost in Translation.” After answering questions surrounding her choice to shoot the majority of the film in a single location, Coppola focused on her own interest in exploring the film’s intimate relationships. “For me, this was a good experiment; centering a movie around just two characters, focusing on their intimate story and also spending a lot of time with one alone.”
In addition to her attraction to intimate settings and storylines, Coppola pointed out her decision to focus on tender and touching situations. After viewing the film and speaking with Coppola, it’s easy to see where these essential elements of her films come from. Personal experiences and a unique voice lead to a meticulous examination of a moment in the life of the protagonist. Few mainstream filmmakers choose to approach a film in this way, but after witnessing the over-indulgent lavishness of “Marie Antoinette,” it’s nice to see Coppola return to form.