Delayed Reaction: Somewhere

Premise: A Hollywood star drifts through life while occasionally watching his daughter.

 

When it comes to Sofia Coppola, you have to meet her at her level or it becomes easy to dismiss her. That's true of a lot of directors. Chris Nolan loves puzzles and excuses to not humanize his characters. Richard Curtis is sentimental and only wants to look at the world generously. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are overly concerned with how friendships can exist after going through personal growth. Coppola does reflect a lot on the malaise of living a privileged life. For that reason, many people look at her movies, say they are just about sad rich white people, and use that as an excuse to disengage with her work. I get it. If you've had your fill of that kind of movie, expecting you to watch one of her movies isn't likely to change your mind. That's not an excuse to call them bad movies though.

 

Accepting that I'm watching a Sofia Coppola movie, I enjoyed Somewhere quite a bit. It's similar to Lost in Translation in a lot of ways. It's also about a famous actor who is going through the motions of his life. The key difference is that it's a father-daughter relationship at the center. Stephen Dorff is one of those actors who I recognize but I don't know why. I sort of just assume he's had some sort of fall from grace or self-inflicted career setbacks, but from what I can tell, he's just a working actor. Pretty boring. It makes him pretty perfect for this kind of role. We've had a decade now of Elle Fanning seemingly surprising people with how good she is in every movie, so it's not a surprise to realize looking back, that she was this good when she was 12.

 

I really love how patient this movie is. It sits with scenes for a while. There's not a ton of dialogue. Since there's very little actual plot, most of the communication is conveyed by the simple fact that she's showing us a scene at all. The movie felt a little thin for me to call it one of Sofia Coppola's best movies. Instead, it's a reminder that she's incredibly consistent. I don't think I've seen of a movie of hers that's bad. Timeline-wise, Somewhere really does fit neatly between Marie Antoinette and The Bling Ring.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend