I heard this saying once about “good intentions.” I think it goes, “Sofia Coppola had good intentions, but Somewhere is still pretty bad.” Just because everyone involved has talent coming out of their zooterkins doesn’t mean that they put all of it on display. Somewhere revisits familiar territory for the filmmaker and although it feels a little unfair to compare her newest film to her earlier successes, the parallels are so in your face they might as well be your own snot. Here again is an actor devoid of human connection, but here lacks any real self-discovery or even minor conflict. It’s like Lost in Translation without the insight, wit or plotline. Instead of a story about sad lonely individuals who flirt with changing their station, it’s a portrait of one such sadsack doing nothing of consequence. A quick Polaroid of Stephen Dorff looking bummed out would have saved everyone a lot of time and effort.
Coppola the Younger has an uncanny talent for capturing some of life’s quietest moments and finding their dramatic underpinnings, and an uncommon sympathy for characters whom most filmmakers would have kicked to the curb in favor of overtly compelling protagonists with grander problems. But her sympathy for Johnny Marco, Somewhere’s heartthrob star actor protagonist, outweighs all audience interest. He’s clearly a normal human being who is uncertain of how to live the thoroughly abnormal life of a celebrity. Stephen Dorff is excellent in the role, but he has nothing to do. He lives from one empty sexual conquest to another, and life repeatedly throws out opportunities for dramatic developments, adventures, intrigue and redemption. The plot, such as it is, puts Johnny in a situation to care for his biological daughter while her mother “finds herself” (or whatever). The daughter is played by Elle Fanning and seems like a fully realized human being. We like her. We don’t even hate Johnny Marco. We just wish they’d do something. Cooking Eggs Benedict doesn’t count as a plot point.
Here is a list of developments that threaten to entertain us but come to nothing: Johnny Marco thinks he’s being followed by the paparazzi. Someone with a blocked number keeps texting Johnny with cryptic and disappointed insults. Johnny pays two young women with long blonde hair to strip for him in his bedroom, although he only gets to sleep with one of them, and wakes up the next morning to find his daughter in the room. The audience notices that his daughter looks a lot like a young version of his little playmates, raising some very serious questions. These intriguing developments and more are introduced and then willfully ignored.
There’s got to be a point Somewhere, and Sofia Coppola clearly knows what she’s doing – all of her previous films have been one degree of exceptional or another – so I assume she has one. It just seems to have been stripped from the film in an attempt at narrative minimalism. I would argue that you can’t have narrative minimalism without some kind of narrative, and that without something to do even a great performance will go to seed. There’s too many excellent artists in front of and behind the camera to write Somewhere off completely, but not nearly enough to recommend it. And that’s not praise with faint damnation: just because Somewhere isn’t as awful as Transformers 2 doesn’t make it good by default. It’s just bad in a different way, and a very boring way at that.
CRAVE Online Rating: 4/10
