Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” starts with a black sports car driving around a circular road in the middle of nowhere, moving in and out of the shot as it does several laps. That’s when you know it’s going to be that type of movie: understated, symbolic and maybe a little bit pretentious in how understated and symbolic it is.
“Somewhere” tells the story of Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), a world-famous blockbuster film star, and his life living at the Chateau Marmount in Hollywood. Marco’s life consists of having parties in his hotel room, having or pursuing sex with beautiful women and ordering in blonde pole-dancing twins. Occasionally, he goes to press conferences or visits the special effects department at the studio, but these seem to be secondary tasks.
There’s a sense that, by the time the film starts up, he’s been at this for a while. He’s at a standstill in his life and doesn’t know what to do with himself. When Bambi and Cindy show up in their candy striper costumes to do their rock-and-roll routine, Marco is amused at best, disinterested for the main part of it and bored by the end. At no point do you get the sense that he’s enjoying them the way you’d expect him to, or enjoying much of anything.
After a long stretch of scenes showing Marco flit from task to task (drink around beautiful women, have a copy of his face made by the special effects team, pass out during sex, watch the strippers dance in tennis outfits to “One Thing” by Amerie, etc.), his daughter from a failed marriage shows up at his room to visit.
Elle Fanning is great as Cleo, Marco’s surprisingly down to earth and practical 11-year-old daughter. She’s the sort of kid who does her work without being told, cooks elegant meals with special sauces and doesn’t show any signs of teenage angst.
Marco proves to be a fun but negligent father. He’s the sort of dad who will play video games with you and order sugary midnight snacks from room service, but also be oblivious to the years you’ve spent taking ice skating lessons. When his wife ends up with some mysterious, unexplained need to go somewhere, he spends a couple of weeks with her, getting to know her and realizing what he’s been missing.
This is a subtle movie with minimal dialogue and no flourishes. There are long, long stretches with little to no dialogue in which the characters just sit and go about their business, or sit and reflect. It mirrors life ““ people don’t go around making rousing, Academy Award-winning speeches about the need to follow through with your commitments to people. Instead, Marco drinks, smokes and stares blankly at walls until he comes to the realization that he hasn’t been living.
There are two mindsets to have during this movie. You can appreciate what the director is trying to do, which is showing the bond between a father and a daughter. That bond is inherently different from the bond between a mother and a daughter ““ it’s more work, it’s awkward, and fathers are more protective. Fanning and Dorff portray that perfectly and even get some laughs. Coppola goes one step further by shining a light on the living-but-not-living lifestyle of the fabulously good-looking and successful elite of Hollywood. Everyone seems to be a mess.
On the other hand, you can look at this as an overly idealized, art house version of what it’s like to be a father with a daughter in a previous relationship. Besides being sour-faced when one of Marco’s mistresses shows up for breakfast, Cleo never once fights with her father, never resents him for not being around, never expresses anything but happiness to be around him. Maybe I’m cynical, but real relationships are more volatile than that.