Unembellished Somewhere a Minimalist Beauty
Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a famous action star who recently broke his wrist during a drunken night partying in his legendary Hollywood hotel the Chateau Marmont. His 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) visits occasionally, the two having a good time playing games, going to the skating rink and lounging by the pool. After his ex-wife more or less disappears, he takes her with him to Europe on a promotional tour for his latest film before getting her to summer camp a few weeks later.
Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning in Somewhere © Focus Features
As far as descriptions go, that’s pretty much it for writer/director Sophia Coppola’s latest effort Somewhere. Much like Lost in Translation, maybe even more so, this is strictly an observational exercise, a stripped-down form of filmmaking that Michelangelo Antonioni or Jean-Pierre Melville would have been proud to have called their own. Not much happens, not much changes, everyone going through the motions of their lives figuring things out as they move slowly along.
There is a simple beauty to this form of filmmaking that is undeniable. I was completely captivated first frame to last, couldn’t take my eyes off of what Coppola was choosing to show me. Everything plays like a snapshot of a life aloof, a life potentially wasted, a life currently in flux; the whole thing a series of brief vignettes of a father trying to decide who he is and what the next step should be.
All that being so, there is a part of me that wishes there were more in the way of meat on this carcass’ bones. Marco doesn’t really do anything. He smokes. He drinks. He watches happily as a couple of blonde strippers do their routine on portable poles right in the comfy confines of his own bedroom. He drives Cleo around. They play Rock Band, listen to an old man sing a song in the lobby and make breakfast together. He goes on press junkets. He gets a full workup at a special effects studio to prepare for a future role.
But does anything concrete happen? Does anyone come to any sort of big realizations about their lives and where they want to go from here? No, not really, and while the ending is suitably ambiguous on that front to say it is definitive or telling would be an outright lie. When I said this movie was observational I wasn’t kidding. Coppola wants us to watch and make up our minds as to whether or not Marco’s doing anything with his life for ourselves, giving us no answers and no definitions because they doing so would to lead us one way or the other and that is precisely the one thing she doesn’t want to do.
This can be frustrating. There were times I wanted to yell at the screen and force Marco to do something and not just sit there like a sack of potatoes. I wanted Cleo to tell him off, to let him know how his actions make her feel. I wanted someone, anyone, to tell him off, and the one brief instance that this does indeed happen (by the likes of Michelle Monaghan, no less) is so out of left field it almost doesn’t even register.
I say so what to all of that. Coppola stages things in an extremely appealing manner, the film moving from scene to scene with a delectable grace that’s almost mesmerizing. The picture is superbly shot by the great Harris Savides (Zodiac), everything having a minimalist sheen that allows the viewer to virtually disappear inside the image itself. Both Dorff and Fanning are wonderful, and by the time it was over I almost said to see their story come to an end.
Much like September’s The American, this won’t be for everyone. Even more so than Anton Corbijn’s hitman thriller, the lack of anything of substance for viewer’s to latch onto can be a tad jarring. But audiences looking for something different, something with intelligence, grace and nerve, something that allows them to come to their own conclusions and ideas about what’s going on for themselves, will find much to love about the unembellished character-driven beauty that is Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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