SOMEWHERE (Coppola, 2010, C) - I’m torn: I enjoyed SOMEWHERE* a lot while watching it, enjoyed its mood especially, but the fact that it’s such a pure distillation of Sofia Coppola’s style and concerns is a mixed blessing. By that I mean that the film both showcases her strengths (the patience to let a shot build, an eye for the ironies of modern life, insight into what makes young girls tick, a knack for getting great, understated and naturalistic performances out of her actors) and that it underlines, sometimes painfully, her weaknesses. Those being, in my humble opinion, an inability to use multiple planes in one shot (leading to a rather flat cinematography), an over-reliance on music to guide the audience’s feelings, and - dare I say it - an undercurrent of misogyny.
I know that might sound strange, considering her first three movies have intriguing, fleshed out girls/women as their protagonists, and Cleo in this movie is a great character, but those are (perhaps too easily) understood as representations of the author: pretty, privileged and disaffected. In LOST IN TRANSLATION, Anna Faris’ character (apparently inspired by Cameron Diaz) is mercilessly mocked; in MARIE ANTOINETTE, many of the female characters are stern mother figures overly obsessed with decorum and superficial hangers-on; in this movie, all women are white, conventionally beautiful and are either throwing themselves at Johnny or pissed that he treated them as disposable.
I’ll admit, it’s not exactly an open-and-shut case, and one can certainly argue that the men don’t exactly get off easy (especially Johnny). But there’s a mean girl streak that bothers me. Not enough not to marvel at a scene like the one above, or not to appreciate the neat way in which the opening scene serves as a metaphor for the whole movie, but enough to make me slightly uncomfortable.
One last thing I’d like to comment on: can we please stop the Antonioni comparisons? Sure, alienation is a common theme, and sure, they both make/made contemplative, slow films with long shots. But the style is completely different. Antonioni loved keeping things at a middle distance, with a very layered image, while Coppola relies (sometimes too much) on the close-up. And it’s not just that: Glenn Kenny recently had a shot on his blog from an Antonioni film I have never seen, LE AMICHE, and I immediately recognized it as Antonioni. I don’t even know why: I just knew. I never would have mistaken it for a Sofia Coppola shot - not that those can’t be recognizable or distinctive - and it would be great if criticism could refrain from such superficial comparisons.
*Which I saw in the cinema, because yes, it only just came out here. In a pretty banged-up print, too. Coppola somehow manages to make living in Chateau Marmont seem kind of unappealing, but at least you’d be able to watch films when they come out. Of course, back when I actually lived in LA - which looks very much like I remember in this film, i.e. pretty ugly and smoggy - I didn’t exactly use the possibility to the fullest, but I blame that on not having a car. </rant>
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ETA: re-reading this, I was probably too harsh - I really like Sofia Coppola as a director, so I tend to have very high expectations. So let me just balance the piece a little: I loved the two scenes with the twin strippers, I thought the use of cooking as a symbol for maturity was well chosen, and I thought the scene in which Johnny Marco literally drifts out of the frame was a nice example of what Jim Emerson recently titled “arthouse suspense”.
