Sofia Coppola’s films are an acquired taste.
The 39-year-old daughter of Oscar-winning director and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”) is an Academy Award recipient – she won Best Original Screenplay for 2003’s thoughtful “Lost in Translation.” Yet, much like the vino her celebrated father’s vineyard serves up each year, the younger Coppola’s indie repertoire (including “The Virgin Suicides” and “Marie Antoinette”) is always crafted with a discerning palate in mind.
That’s not to say there aren’t universal notes of flavor in Sofia Coppola’s latest, “Somewhere,” which depicts the delicate relationship between a burnt-out movie star (the fictitious Johnny Marco, played with restraint by the ever-underrated Stephen Dorff) and his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning as Cleo in a sweet, quiet performance). Both of the film’s lead actors originally hail from metro Atlanta.
Written and directed by Coppola and shot primarily at the infamous Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, “Somewhere” is to filmmaking what photographer Philip Lorca di Corcia’s portraits are to fine art photography: intricately orchestrated vignettes that vacillate between the beautiful and the banal; for Coppola, every detail magnifies the charms and absurdities of Hollywood life.
In fluid scenes that employ techniques reminiscent of both Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni (1966’s “Blow-Up”) and writer Sam Shepard (1984’s “Paris, Texas”), Coppola guides Johnny (Dorff) and Cleo (Fanning) into a summer awakening as captured through the lens of an emo-minimalist.
In the film, the Ferrari-driving Johnny’s so numb to the extravagance – and debauchery – of his surroundings, he dozes off while watching exotic dancers in his hotel suite. Only Cleo’s innocent twirling at an ice skating lesson gets his attention. Add a game of “Rock Band” and some homemade mac-n-cheese (lovingly made for Daddy from ingredients Cleo orders up from Marmont room service), and you’ve got instant father-daughter bonding.
In a recent phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Coppola said during the shoot she asked Dorff to watch the 1973 flick “Paper Moon” starring Ryan and Tatum O’Neal. “It was such a great buddy film” featuring a real-life dad and child. “I love the relationship in that movie,” she said. “Maybe we were channeling that a little bit.”
Coppola also recalled trips she and her father took when she was a girl – especially one to Italy, the same country Johnny and Cleo visit in “Somewhere.”
“I remember going to film festivals and stuff with my dad when I was younger,” Coppola said. “And I had been to this TV show sort of like the Italian version of the ‘TV Guide Awards’[recreated in the film]. So, wherever [Johnny] goes, it’s kind of this heightened showbiz world, but based on a real place.”
“Somewhere,” which occasionally makes Hollywood seem the emptiest place on earth, won the Golden Lion prize at the 2010 Venice Film Festival last fall, and has many critics buzzing with praise for Coppola’s vision of Johnny Marco’s vacuous world. French rockers Phoenix provided the musical complement to the film’s visuals; Coppola’s partner, Thomas Mars, sings for the Grammy-winning band.
As for Coppola’s personal connections to Tinseltown, she can’t claim it as her home (she grew up mainly in Northern California and has lived in Paris and New York). “But there are parts of L.A. that I love, and parts of it that I find bizarre,” she said. “I still spend time there because I have a lot of family there.”
Los Angeles proves a fitting backdrop for the celebrity culture glorified and vilified in “Somewhere”: supermodel Angela Lindvall, actor Benicio Del Toro, and Rooney singer Robert Schwartzman (Coppola’s cousin) all make deadpan cameos. But, just before the film’s climax, in a move that could only be inspired by Las Vegas – and another of Coppola’s Oscar-toting relatives – Johnny drives Cleo to Sin City and then drops her at summer camp via a thrilling helicopter ride across the desert.
“My cousin Nicolas Cage would do something like that,” Coppola laughed.
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