SOMEWHERE
Sofia Coppola’s sumptuous new film Somewhere opens on a test track in the California desert, a sleek black Ferrari groaning and humming as it speeds past, circling around in an endless loop. The shot is long, and static, setting the tone for a movie that is both dense and languorous, an enigma wrapped up in the trappings of exhausting decadence. Our hero, as it were, is Johnny Marco, a movie star who shuffles through life always on the verge of falling asleep―which he does, at one point, while a pair of pole-dancers attempt to entertain him. Stephen Dorff plays Johnny with the weary expression of an exhausted hound, his cheeks drooping slightly and his eyes glazed over except in the presence of his daughter Cleo, a knowing and demure Elle Fanning.
There is little in the way of plot development; Somewhere is less narrative than tone poem, a series of set pieces that exemplify the degradations of modern Hollywood. Coppola has intimate knowledge of this milieu’s mind-numbing traditions and practices―the inanities of the press conference, the ennui of easy sex, the torpor of an art form increasingly enslaved to commercialism―yet recognizes its unique privileges as well. Johnny suffers through the indignities of an Italian awards show, but the reward is four flavors of gelato and a dubbed late-night episode of Friends in a king bed with his daughter. Coppola understands that the true perquisites of fame and fortune are not fast cars and fawning adoration, but rather sangfroid and repose, a life of ease and freedom from anxiety. When Johnny oversleeps or ignores a pile of scripts, it seems less an act of dissolution or rebellion than surrender. Hollywood, per Coppola, is a gilded cage, much as Versailles was for Marie Antoinette.
Somewhere is a film about anomie and disaffection, decaying morals and overwhelming rootlessness, but the intimate moments between Johnny and Cleo―an underwater tea party, a game of Guitar Hero, “Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear” rendered as lullaby in the lobby of the Château Marmont―keep the film from feeling caustic. The scenes glow with the golden light so typical of Southern California, the tableaux presented as images of beautiful melancholy. Even at its most tedious, Los Angeles still looks like the Promised Land. Coppola, through four films, has perfected the art of alienation, and like her previous work, Somewhere is a study of the misfortunes of the fortunate, an investigation of the ways that those who have everything can still feel like they have nothing. What this film asks from us is not, of course, pity, but recognition and understanding.
