Starring: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning Director: Sofia Coppola Category: IIB (English and Italian)
Somewhere is about someone going nowhere, stuck in the torpor of a celebrity treadmill that he doesn't know how to, or won't, step off.
This is hardly new terrain for Coppola, and Somewhere isn't her best attempt at representing how one navigates such ennui. Lost in Translation, her 2003 film about a middle-aged actor and a star photographer's wife rediscovering their lost bearings in Tokyo, does a better job of it. What makes Somewhere a somewhat beguiling piece, however, is Coppola's rediscovery of her own aesthetic bearings. She delivers a chamber piece that draws the viewer in with its details, its genteel humour and a slowly altering relationship that makes a dent but never really threatens to explode into full-scale histrionics and closure.
At the centre of Somewhere is actor Johnny (Stephen Dorff), a resident at a celebrity-filled Los Angeles hotel. He does his job by enduring mundane questions at press conferences and humiliating experiences doing publicity events, such as a tension-driven photo session with a co-star he might have had a fling with. Johnny indulges in excesses with minimal enthusiasm, to the point of falling asleep while watching a private pole-dancing performance in his room.
He is shown as a pawn at the mercy of others. He's endlessly questioned and instructed by disembodied voices - his agent, his chauffeur, journalists, party-goers. Johnny's life changes with the appearance of his daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning, above with Dorff), a composed and compliant child. Coppola never plays her as Johnny's antithesis or antagonist - rather than challenging his lethargy, Cleo follows his cue, playing his video games and following him on a foreign sojourn. She even quietly tolerates her father's sexual frolics and the appearance of interlopers in their erstwhile, tight father-daughter relationship.
Somewhere has its charms, but its closeness to Coppola's own life - she has acknowledged in interviews that her own experiences, as the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, fed into parts of the story - might have dulled the film's edge.
