Audient Outliers: Somewhere

This is the fifth and penultimate film in my 2024 bi-monthly series rewatching a single film I didn't care for from a filmmaker I otherwise love.

This Audient Outliers series required fudging of the rules right from the very start, when I chose Jonathan Glazer's filmography for February -- even though I had not yet seen The Zone of Interest, so I couldn't truly know if Sexy Beast was the only of his films I didn't like. The loose interpretation of the rules has continued throughout, as re-examining Frank Darabont's The Mist required not only factoring in his TV show The Walking Dead as a point in the win column for him, but having not seen one of his films either, The Majestic.

So it wasn't a perfectly conceived series. So what. I am not trying to please some outside body that judges my adherence to the rules. I'm trying to create a reason for revisiting films that gave me pause.

And so in October I have now watched Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, even though it is conceivably only my third least favorite Coppola film.

If Somewhere and Priscilla came up side-by-side in a duel on Flickchart, I'd probably pick Priscilla -- or would have before I rewatched Somewhere, but I won't reveal yet whether that viewing changed my choice in this duel. 

But if that duel were between Somewhere and On the Rocks, there is no doubt that Somewhere would win hands down -- before that viewing, after that viewing, and always. 

So why, you might ask, did I not choose On the Rocks if I wanted to finally break my string of four straight white male directors to start this series?

Simple: I knew there were no hidden depths to On the Rocks that would be revealed from a second viewing. Beyond featuring Bill Murray and the music of her husband Thomas Mars, On the Rocks is so little like what we would expect from a Coppola film that I suspect it will always seem like the outlier in her filmography -- objectively for us all, not just subjectively for me -- even after she has made her final film, which hopefully won't be for another 30 years.

Somewhere is probably nothing but hidden depths.

But how would they play for me on this viewing?

First a little background on Somewhere. In my family, it is most remembered for the funny circumstances of our original viewing.

When my wife and I first watched it in January 2011, our first child was only about five months old. So we weren't going to the movies together much, if at all. This was the closest we came, but it took some humorous logistics.

Basically, I went to the first showing of Somewhere at a theater relatively near our house. After it ended, my wife met me in the parking lot with our son, who was asleep in his stroller, while she went to the very next showing. I transitioned him back to my car and drove home while she went to the movie. So he went to sleep with mummy and woke up with daddy. I can't remember whether or not the expression on his face was particularly reflective of that surprise.

I wish the whimsical circumstances of this viewing had made me more favorably disposed to the movie, but they did not. (Maybe if I'd been the second viewer, rather than the first. At that point, I hadn't yet done the whimsical exchange of our child.) I recognized the filmmaking skills of the director, on a personal hot streak with me after she scored my #1 spot in 2003 with Lost in Translation and a big favorite with Marie Antoinette in 2007, which I did not see until 2008 so I couldn't rank it to determine where it would have landed in my year-end rankings. I just didn't vibe with what she was trying to accomplish.

The movie felt like 97 minutes of repeating the message that celebrity has hollow comforts and hollows out your sense of humanity. Stephen Dorff's Johnny Marco puts a rather fine point on this very near the climax of the movie, on the phone with his ex, when he says he is "not even a person." While each little vignette demonstrating this hollowness is compelling its own right, their collection adds up to less than the sum of the parts.

I still basically feel this way about the movie after my second viewing. I see on Letterboxd I retroactively gave this movie 2.5 stars (I added all my movies to Letterboxd around 2013), and that would probably get bumped up to three today. But that could also be because I am becoming a softie in my old age and I hand out three stars to movies as long as they did not offend me. (A little bit of an exaggeration, but maybe not as much of an exaggeration as I would like.)

Although the movie is fundamentally "boring" -- in other words, that's sort of by design -- I did not specifically feel bored while watching it. However, this might be a good time to mention the funny coincidence to this viewing. When I had not yet decided what I was watching on Wednesday night, tossing up a couple options including Somewhere, our family watched an episode of The Simpsons from 2011 over dinner, in which Lisa creates a social media service called Springface. (Probably not the show's only riff on The Social Network, but definitely the first.) In this episode, Homer talks about how he can use the site -- I can't really remember the relevance in the context of the episode -- to watch a Sofia Coppola movie on double speed, so it seems like a normal movie. 

Homer's comment was almost certainly intended in relation to Somewhere, which came out the same autumn as The Social Network, meaning the Simpsons writers had just enough time to write it up and animate it for air about a year later. That's the sort of "universe telling you what to do" moment that pushed me toward Somewhere as my viewing that evening.

Homer is right, of course, that Coppola's pace is purposefully slower. That doesn't bother me in films like Translation, Antoinette, The Bling Ring or The Beguiled, which are my four favorite Coppola films. It bothers me a little here because there is something inherently navel gazey about following a movie star who attracts the attention of every woman who crosses his path and has landed for a long-term stay at the Chateau Marmont hotel, almost by accident because it represents both the freedoms and the indulgences afforded by his position in the world. It is clear from the first moment of the movie -- the rather metaphorically obvious scene where Johnny drives his Ferrari in a circle in the desert -- that we are not meant to find this lifestyle as appealing as it would seem on the surface. But the fact that Coppola errs on the side of presenting, rather than commenting on, Johnny's life certainly does allow a viewer to dream themselves away into it, if they wanted.

In reality, Somewhere would be a weaker film if it damned Johnny's life choices in no uncertain terms, or if it showed him being truly neglectful of his daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning, great even from this early age). Johnny is actually a pretty good parent when he's around. But he's also prone to sneaking in a quickie with a random woman in the hope that Cleo doesn't notice. 

There is probably a core truth to the depictions of the layabout movie star, though the actual truth, from Coppola's own life, is her perspective on being the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, and traveling with him to movie premieres. (The section of Somewhere set in Italy is probably my favorite.) The star's behavior is something she could easily glean from being in that world, and perhaps Johnny Marco is also a continued processing of the character based on her former partner, Spike Jonze, who exists in the form of the cameraman played by Giovanni Ribisi in Lost in Translation. 

So none of this rings false, and it does look like a peek behind the curtain at eccentric things that seem apocryphal, which only makes them more likely to have happened: the male masseuse who strips naked while massaging Johnny, because it's part of his process; the nearly twin dancers performing for Johnny on portable stripper poles they bring to his hotel room; playing Guitar Hero in the Chateau Marmont room that has become essentially permanently his, room #59.

I think we don't realize the full strength of what Coppola is doing here until the end, when Johnny has left Cleo at camp, and we realize just how comparatively empty his life is once the spark she brings is no longer there. That father-daughter bond is retroactively reinforced in the final ten minutes of the movie, when we are left with only Johnny, and see what a lonely place that is.

So am I talking myself into liking Somewhere a little more than I did previously? Maybe even a little more than boosting its rating by a half-star, which I already said is a sort of inflation, based on my changing temperament as a critic?

Maybe I am. But I can tell I am not that interested in watching Somewhere a third time. I still think it is a little less than the sum of its parts, still missing something that would steer it more firmly toward ... something.

It occurs to me that it is very hard to define what keeps a Coppola movie on the right side of this line between consequentiality and inconsequentiality. Lost in Translation is the clearest example of getting this ineffable balance right, even as it has some moments that feel like dead spots -- clearly more by design in that case, representing the vicissitudes of this connection between Bob and Charlotte. Marie Antoinette, my second favorite, gets huge points for the production design and the way Coppola uses modern music in a manner that was quite new back in 2007.

I can see that Somewhere would land on the right side of this line for some people. It doesn't quite for me, but that hardly makes it without virtues.

Okay, I will wrap up this series in December with an as-yet determined final title. All I can tell you for sure is that if it doesn't involve another cheat, I will be surprised. 

I am not an auteurist

Clarification of the subject: I am a big fan of the auteur theory. That is not what this post is about.

Yesterday morning I was very belatedly listening to an episode of The Next Picture Show, the podcast hosted by staff of the former website The Dissolve, in which they were discussing a pair of Sofia Coppola films: Marie Antoinette and Priscilla. The structure of the show is to compare a new release to a classic that it echoes, one each week in a two-week pairing, and choosing two films from the same director's career is not uncommon. (A recent show I listened to was their 400th, so they've had to stray from the purity of the conceit on plenty of occasions, plus are rapidly using up their available pool of "classic" films. Though I do love Marie Antoinette so in this case I think it qualifies.)

As the discussion progressed to Priscilla, I found two things very unsurprising:

Hosts Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps basically loved the movie.

Host Tasha Robinson, long branded the show's contrarian, did not love it, though she respected it. 

(Fourth host Genevieve Koski, who produces the show and sometimes doesn't appear in the main episodes, was somewhere in between.)

I described the above reactions as unsurprising, but that is only a criticism in the case of Scott and Keith, because I agree with Tasha and have the same basic reservations about Priscilla that she does.

It can be hard to defend Tasha Robinson. Although she is undoubtedly a critic with immaculate film coverage and is easily the most well spoken of the four, in terms of having a voice and a delivery made for podcasts, she can sometimes dominate the discussion and occasionally comes off as a blowhard. Plus there are all those contrarian opinions, some of which are more defensible than others.

But you know what?

Give me a contrarian any day over a person who blindly rubber stamps the latest film from an acclaimed auteur.

Sofia Coppola certainly fits that description, perhaps more so than any other female working director. You know when you are watching a Sofia Coppola film. (Except, maybe, On the Rocks.) And I love Sofia Coppola, having named Lost in Translation my #1 film of 2003 and having felt very strongly about The Bling Ring, The Beguiled and the aforementioned Marie Antoinette.

But you know what? Coppola does not make a great film every time out, as evidenced by previous misfires Somewhere and the similarly aforementioned On the Rocks. Priscilla is better than those two, but it now joins that group, to some extent. (If you want my thoughts on the one feature film of hers I haven't mentioned, I want to like The Virgin Suicides more than I do, but I still respect it quite a lot.)

Scott and Keith appear to find Coppola incapable of misstepping. One of them also talked about how Somewhere, which had a decidedly middling reception at the time of its release, has lately been embraced as the classic that it is. Maybe I have to watch Somewhere again, but I doubt I would reach that conclusion.

Even On the Rocks was thrown some love. "It's her least essential film, but it's still pretty good." Um, no it isn't. 

Today I am interested in examining this compulsion.

If I were being truly cynical, I would say it stems from fear. If you think someone is going to call your critical bonafides into question if you don't like the latest movie from a respected auteur, you will find yourself emphasizing all the things you like about it, and dismissing anything that doesn't work for you.

But even in that case, you should be able to acknowledge the things that didn't work for you in a free-ranging, 30-minute discussion of the type they have on The Next Picture Show. Tasha was very reasonable in stating her concerns with the movie, which I won't rehash here (you can read my review if you want). It was like she was begging Scott and Keith to meet her halfway. Instead, they just kept doubling down, gainsaying anything that she said and coming across more like the contrarians themselves. Not in a disrespectful way, but more as a sign of their own recognition of the absurdity of their contrasting opinions, the other two were laughing in spite of themselves -- almost as though this were a snapshot of the podcast's core personality dynamic writ large. (I find it an interesting side note that the two men were the ones in favor of the movie directed by a woman, while the two women were critical of it.)

Or it could come from insecurity. If some people think a master made a masterpiece, and you did not see it that way, maybe the problem was with you and you didn't get something essential about it. I feel this sometimes especially about older classics that I am just seeing for the first time. But you have to have the confidence to state that something about a film doesn't work the way it should or as advertised, because I guarantee you there is someone else out there that feels the exact same way. 

Then it could just be a case of giving deference to a great artist. Even if they made a movie that was less than their best work, you don't want to denigrate their overall output in the way a mixed or negative review would do. It's almost like this awesome creative force doesn't have the power to withstand your pan. If anything, that person has a lot more power to withstand it than the fledgling newcomer would. 

I feel like none of these things are stumbling blocks for Tash. And this is why I will always defend Tasha. She may reach some conclusions I don't agree with, which is the nature of differing subjective viewpoints on films among the critical community. Worse, she may reach some conclusions where I can attack the logic of her reaching that conclusion, beyond the conclusion itself. But never do I think she has decided she likes a movie even before she has started watching it. I have exactly zero doubt that Tasha Robinson considers every movie on its own terms, and this is the sort of critic I fancy myself being, as well.

I'm sure Scott and Keith fancy themselves that sort of critic. What critic wouldn't. And in truth, I often admire them considerably more than I admire Tasha. They may not sound as professional in the podcast medium as she does, but their thoughts are always well researched and soundly argued.

The thing is, I can't get over the idea that on some level, they aren't being as critical as they should be about the work of a favorite director. They are not going to surprise us. They are going to provide us reactions that fall well within the critical mainstream.

Take their favorite films of 2023, for example. Scott went for The Zone of Interest. I believe Keith went for Killers of the Flower Moon. (Genevieve, who is being neglected in this post, was not on that show. Part of her problem is that she is a TV editor and has to watch a lot more TV than movies, so she might be selecting from 20 movies for her best of the year, and 15 of them would be films discussed on the podcast.)

Tasha? She anointed Saltburn as her #1.

Now, Saltburn is my least favorite of those three films, but it was still barely in my top 30 for 2023. (Oops, no, it was my #33.) And I find it to be a much more interesting choice, one that does not just elevate the most recent offering from one of the industry's undisputed greats. 

All in the family

Just as the sons of major league baseball players disproportionately tend to follow them into professional baseball, so too do the sons and daughters of those in the film industry. (Follow them into movies, not into baseball.)

Palo Alto is a prime example of that.

There seems to be no end to the number of Coppolas that keep materializing. (And we're not even talking about Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzmann.) First it was Sofia, erasing everyone's memory of her weak acting in The Godfather Part III and providing one of the more vital and distinct visions among upcoming filmmakers. Then it was Roman, whose CQ, while a bit more esoteric, represented a firm grasp of the medium and a distinct vision of his own. Now the brother and sister have a niece, and Francis Ford a granddaughter, in Gia, who has announced her attentions to be reckoned with as well.

Palo Alto shows an uncommon sense of naturalism from a woman who has filmmaking coursing through her genes. While its realism is sometimes at the expense of, you know, plot, it has a dreamy quality that is entrancing. Which is to say, it's both entirely realistic and entirely dreamy. It feels like something Sofia might have made, but it's also a bit less stylized than Sofia's thematically similar The Bling Ring. However, if their posters are any indication, it seems more likely that Gia is emulating another of her aunt's films:

Then there's the star of the movie, herself a celebrity offspring. And as with the Coppolas, the older generation in the star's family also has multiple people working in the industry. She is Emma Roberts, Eric's daughter and Julia's niece, and she has been on the scene quite a while for a 24-year-old. I first remember seeing her in Aquamarine, way back in 2006, or more likely Lymelife, which came out in 2009 but which I actually saw before Aquamarine. Roberts is all about naturalism, all about underplaying a moment that could be overplayed, and she has always struck me as a fine addition to any cast -- even a scene stealer. Which is hard to do if you are underplaying things, but perhaps that's just how captivating a presence she is, without being an obvious physical beauty. (I mean, she's very attractive, but they are girl next door looks, not model looks.) In Palo Alto she has the halting, hesitating quality of teenagers down perfectly, without appearing to try very hard to get it. Simply put, she's a natural.

Then there's the other star of the movie, Jack Kilmer, who is Val's son. (Val, who also appears in the movie, so briefly that I almost miss the point of his cameo.) The verdict is still out on Jack, as this is his first movie, and you wouldn't say he really has the charisma to start getting a flood of offers. However, in his own way he equals Roberts in his naturalism, or rather, equals the standard for naturalism that Coppola has put in place. Never having appeared in anything before doesn't prevent his name from appearing on the front of the DVD I'm taking back to the library today.

Finally, there's Nat Wolff, the third young star of the movie. I suppose he has about an equal role to the other two, but he feels like a third wheel because the other two are each other's love interests, making them (for all intents and purposes) the romantic leads. Wolff is Polly Draper's son. Who's Polly Draper? Here you go:

She was on thirtysomething. I guess I thought she had done a bit more than that. Hey, they can't all be related to Batman or Pretty Woman.

Even James Franco, upon whose stories this movie was based, and who appears in a supporting role, has some famous family. His brother Dave is a busy working actor as well, having starred in 21 Jump Street, Neighbors and Now You See Me. (And has the distinction of having just gotten engaged to Alison Brie, but let's not let our jealousy sidetrack us.)

While Palo Alto is obviously a good example of this phenomenon at work, it's probably a lot more common than we think. Hollywood is littered with scions of actors, writers and directors of yore. It makes sense, I guess. Not only are you possibly genetically predisposed to this kind of talent, but by watching your parent do it for your whole life growing up, it seemed like something really cool to try to do. Never mind that by having a parent who can influence the production of a film, you have a far greater chance of getting cast.

And so maybe these types stick together, which is why we're seeing a bunch of them in Palo Alto. They come at the world with the same chips on their shoulders, the same need to prove people wrong. If someone says you got a role because of nepotism, all you want to do is show them how good you really are. Sofia Coppola did that magnificently -- if not in her acting, then in her directing. Jack Kilmer may struggle at it, but it remains to be seen. Either way, these people are each others' safe harbors. They've got each others' backs.

And I'll be really interested to see what the latest chip off the old Coppola block comes up with next.

Bling things

It's a pretty big tribute to Sofia Coppola that I have loved exactly one of her movies that I've seen in the theater, yet I still view the release of one of her movies as a major theatrical event.

That movie I loved was Lost in Translation, and it was nearly ten years ago that I had this transformative visit to the movies. Lost in Translation was my #1 movie of 2003.

Yet somehow that did not translate to a theatrical screening of her 2006 follow-up, Marie Antoinette. I guess I believed the negative hype and stayed away. When I later caught it on video, I was mesmerized. Not to the same extent as when I saw Lost in Translation, but enough that I felt like I should never doubt Sofia again.

Then came Somewhere.

But I was still excited enough by Coppola's potential that I prioritized seeing The Bling Ring in the theater, which is what I did on Monday night. A couple different thoughts occurred to me while watching it, so I thought I'd break them up, subheading style.

Hilton week

Who would have guessed that I would see two movies within one week that featured Paris Hilton?

Although I hate to draw attention to it if you missed it, last Saturday I wrote about how The Hottie & the Nottie was not nearly as bad as I expected ... and possibly better than that. I went on to explain that Hilton showed enough shrewdness to subtly undercut herself here and there, which flies in the face of this image we have of her as an unapologetic narcissist.

Well, consider it 2-for-2 after The Bling Ring.

Hilton is a character here to the extent that the mischievous teenagers at the story's center break into her house a half-dozen times over the course of the narrative. She actually appears on screen once as well, seen across the room at a club.

The thing that interested me is how she again walks that fine line between glorifying herself and poking fun at herself.

Over the course of the film there's a good ten minutes of footage that purportedly takes place inside Paris' house, though it seems very unlikely that her actual house was used as a set. What's notable is how close this probably is to what the inside of her real house looks like, with entire rooms devoted to her jewelry and other types of excess that should seem to be the kind of thing that qualifies as the "secret shame of the rich." (This is, of course, assuming that Paris has any shame, which she may not.)

However, what really caught my eye was that the walls are adorned with pictures of Paris -- framed magazine covers, vanity portraits, you name it. The characters even comment on it. "Look at me, I'm obsessed with myself" the place screams. And Paris signed off on that.

There's also a moment when the characters find Polaroid pictures of Hilton doing ... well, you don't know what, but they ask "What's that all over her body?"

As much as I tend to read this in Paris' favor, perhaps it's really just that she's so into self-promotion that she doesn't even see it as something to feel embarrassed about. Modesty has never been her strong suit.

A less extreme Spring Breakers

I knew going in that the movie would share something in common with Spring Breakers, one of my favorite movies so far this year.

Both movies feature young (high school vs. college-aged) girls getting in way over their heads in the partying lifestyle. Both movies feature characters who seem blind to the mounting consequences of their actions. (I guess that's kind of the same thing.) And both movies feature actresses breaking away from the clean-cut entertainment properties (Disney, Harry Potter) that previously defined them.

Only, The Bling Ring is the movie you make if you aren't entirely ready to go for it.

As much as I did really like The Bling Ring, it feels pretty "safe" compared to the rawness of Breakers. That movie is kind of like The Bling Ring turned up to 11, exploitative, sexual and violent where Bling Ring is comparatively elegant and tasteful.

However, both films are clearly tapping into something that interests us right now: the criminal aspirations of clean-cut, and sometimes wealthy, young women. The thing that struck me is that in both films, the young girls either listen to or sing along with hardcore gangsta rap. Part of being a 21st century post-teenage girl, apparently, is wanting to be an early 1990s black man in Compton.

Where credit is due?

One of the first things you notice when watching The Bling Ring is that it is dedicated to Harris Savides, the DP who was working on his second project with Coppola when he died last October.

However, in reading a review of the movie afterward, I wondered if one particular shot that was credited to his great eye was more a feat of photography or a feat of staging.

It's definitely one of the most arresting moments of the movie. Two of the main characters break into Audrina Patridge's house -- again, probably not actually her house -- and their B&E is captured from about the view of a helicopter hovering in place maybe 150 feet up, at angle of 45 degrees from the house. The shot goes on for two minutes as the two characters rummage through, turning off lights in one room, turning them on in another, filling up their bags with trinkets and treasures and eventually meeting again on the ground floor to exit.

It's breathtaking filmmaking, but is it a greatness that should really be ascribed to Savides? Or was that just a way for this critic to honor the dead?

It's not a rhetorical question I'm asking -- I'm really curious. It's a similar question to whether you credit the cinematographer in an unbroken take like the kinds you get in Before Midnight. And my answer is: it depends on whether the camera is moving. An unbroken take is a feat of both acting and cinematography in a movie like Children of Men, where the camera must move in addition to the actors saying all their lines and hitting all their marks. But in something like Before Midnight or 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the camera is just still, taking it all in. In fact, the DP could have set up on a tripod and just walked away.

The unique thing about the shot in The Bling Ring is that it's not something you're getting from a tripod. Well, most likely is that the camera is on a tripod somewhere on the side of the Hollywood Hills, a spot that has the desired angle on the house below. It only looks like it's taken from the world's most stationary helicopter because there are no other landmarks in the camera's peripheral vision to suggest it's on the ground.

So does Savides get credit for thinking up this shot? Or just for executing it? And in a way, aren't we most impressed that the actors did the things they were supposed to do while the camera was running?

Maybe he's getting credit for the slight "ebb" effect the camera seems to have -- it's still, for sure, but is it moving in or out ever so slightly? I can't say for sure. It could just be an optical illusion.

Ultimately, though, I think you can credit Savides in the same way you can credit the director for things you're not sure if he (or she!) did. Film is the ultimate collaborative medium, which means that no one person ever takes full credit or full blame for anything. And if Savides contributed anything at all to one of the most interesting shots I've seen in a film this year, then he deserves credit.

Steven Sondebergh and Sylvia Coppola

The Cannes Film Festival is opening today. Shows how closely I follow Cannes -- I always thought Cannes was in June.

I know about the opening of the festival because I heard a bit on NPR this morning, mentioning that The Great Gatsby (which I saw last night and liked quite a bit) will be opening the festivities, even though it's not in contention.

However, according to the NPR story, films by "Steven Sondebergh" and "Sylvia Coppola" will indeed be in contention for awards.

This despite the fact that the film by "Steven Sondebergh" is actually a TV movie (Beyond the Candelabra). At least "Sylvia Coppola" has a legit movie in The Bling Ring.

I know people make mistakes, but a) an NPR reporter? and b) two in the same story on two very prominent directors?

Okay, just a quickie for this Wednesday. I know I haven't been writing much lately -- that's a combination of me not bursting with interesting thoughts, and not having the time to write about the interesting thoughts I am having. Here's hoping you'll be seeing posts more regularly from me soon.