Movie of the Week: SOMEWHERE (Sofia Coppola, 2010)

For Oscar week, a great movie about Hollywood that was nowhere near the Oscars

What an ocean of difference it is to rewatch Somewhere after half a decade of living in Los Angeles. Don’t get me wrong — I loved it when I first saw it as a teenager in Wisconsin, high off the wispy melancholy of Lost in Translation (2003) and eager for more. But to fully jive with what I see as Coppola’s most personal film is to recognize her keen, almost molecular understanding of its setting. Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a womanizing B-lister who seems to hold the soullessness of Hollywood inside his very body. Living at the Chateau Marmont and going nowhere fast, he’s jolted back to life by an extended visit from his daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning), who normally lives with her mother. The loose series of episodes that follows, like all Coppola’s work, has a lovely handmade quality to it. That patented style, however, reaches new heights with the participation of the late cinematographer Harris Savides (shooting with the same lenses that Coppola’s father used on 1983’s Rumble Fish). Under the canny eye of Savides, Somewhere is suffused with sunshine yet somehow perpetually dim, a visual paradox propped up by Coppola’s cutting sense of humor. There are too many great bits to list, but among my favorites: Johnny picking up a pear, wondering if a little snack could be the cure to his boredom (it never is); Johnny’s friend Sammy (Chris Pontius) telling Cleo that all ballet teachers are alcoholics, a bit of improv that draws genuine surprise from Fanning; Ellie Kemper’s brief cameo playing everyone I’ve ever met in Hollywood. Given its acid wit, you’d expect Somewhere to be more traditionally “entertaining” than it is. But Coppola’s a distinct artist, and her imposition of an almost glacial pace is what sets the movie apart. You’re there with Johnny and Cleo, sitting through uncut moments of pain, joy, and silence; what’s left are lifelike snapshots that capture these people, in this place, at this time with unerring clarity. Fathers and daughters, men and women, money and its discontents — and above all, the healing powers of love.

Available for rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and other major platforms.