Somewhere

In a nearby safari park the wardens have taken steps to alleviate depression amongst the gorillas, they hide their food from them or leave it in hard to get places; this saves the gorillas having to sit around, eat, copulate and vegetate. Hollywood A-lister Johnny has this gorilla depression, everything he could possibly want comes at the end of a telephone call. Even the most difficult banana of all, sex, is available by scratching the back of his neck and signalling his assent, or at the end of another phone call if he's feeling especially lazy (which is often).

I once heard it said that rich people live years in the span of a single day, and Johnny certainly does have that flow of experiences coming at him, but the problem for him is that there's no feeling (let's all take a moment to have a boohoo for Johnny). He can barely stifle yawns when his eleven-year-old daughter Cleo, on a custody visit, shows him how she has become a brilliant ice skater and cooks him perfect eggs Benedict for breakfast. Life's too easy and it's suffocating him. There is a suspicion that he's a fluke, that his surfer-boy looks and beatific smile have carried him to the top, but I think there must have been some drive once, as evidenced by a faltering but very pretty rendition of Bach's Goldberg Variation #1.

Ultimately, Johnny Marco has the kind of problems that everyone else wants, and so it's very difficult to feel for him. The movie doesn't have any contrast either, none of the harsh realities of normal Californian workaday lives makes it to the screen. After the decadence of Marie Antoinette I kind of wondered whether Sofia was aware of normality, or whether she just grew up in Arcadia with the other film kids who turn up in the special thanks section at the end of the credits. Johnny Marco is probably the most complacent human alive, but the film doesn't exactly scream that, perhaps because Sofia Coppola doesn't know it. Another flaw is that Coppola's alter-ego Cleo has a decidedly airbrushed personality.

The detail was a big highlight of this film, time seems to have been spent getting the authenticity of the trappings of wealth. Johnny has a bottle of Château Pétrus on the bedside table (retails from $1,000 to $30,000 depending on vintage), chambréed to vinegar, and propped up on a wall is a lithograph by that master of Californian alienation, Ed Ruscha ("Cold beer, beautiful women", $10,000 to a cool million depending on whether it's a limited edition lithograph or the original painting). Other nice details give you insight into character, including a pill bottle of Propecia in his bathroom (prevents male pattern balding), which says he's worried about the onset of middle age, and the player name he has on his games console, 20thCenturyBoy, a sign that he's become his persona.

The cinematography is the second plus, though it's not exactly adventurous the filmmakers were prepared to let the action drift out of shot when they felt like it.

I think Somewhere is a difficult film to watch twice because there's very little connection for a non-wealthy person, the film's torpor has a complacent lull to it which is a little hard to bear. Thematically, I'm not convinced that I've seen mature filmmaking from Sofia Coppola yet.

"Somewhere" is a polarizing film, which makes it all the stranger that I find myself precisely in the middle of debate. Some hail it as a minimalistic masterwork, while others leave the theater rubbing sleep from their eyes. The latest film by Sofia Coppola isn't for everyone, and stands so structureless that it threatens to liquefy at any moment. With few cuts and most scenes playing out in even fewer angles, it's easy to grow impatient or frustrated with the director. What I admire about her film however is its commitment to capturing complete moments even at the expense of the audience.

"Lost in Translation" this isn't. "Somewhere" isn't anchored by as charismatic or immediately recognizable an on screen pair as Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. The world of the former film is also more vibrant and alive than the Hollywood Coppola depicts. She dials back everything until "Somewhere" is essentially an exercise in simplicity. Many have found that quality refreshing, but I was left somewhat cold by the purely surface-level examination of the tedium of stardom.

I absolutely admire Coppola's intentions. Probably my biggest gripe with "Somewhere" is that it employs plot-bombs out of necessity. After 45 minutes of casual observation of our protagonist, burnt-out actor Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), Coppola inelegantly drops 30 seconds of expository dialogue into a phone call that sets up the rest of movie. It rings immediately false and seems out of place in an otherwise drifting film.

And there are some beautiful sights along the way. Coppola manages to transcend her sedentary camera-work with occasionally brilliant choreography. A pair of pole dancers performing a hokey routine springs to mind, as does a gracefully executed figure skating sequence. The director has a knack for using characters rather than set-ups to color our experience, but my problem with "Somewhere" is that not every scene is equally fascinating. Some merely communicate an idea and a feeling, but drag on for far too long. Admittedly, to truncate her moments would be to rob them of their intended impact, but as a moviegoer it's hardly thrilling to watch characters lounge poolside for the better part of a minute.

Coppola is at her most successful when she's able to wring the irony out of a scenario. When Johnny arrives in Italy to accept an award, we get a clear sense of the dichotomy between the hoopla of the entertainment industry and a jaded entertainer. That everyone around him is speaking in a foreign language completes the metaphor and makes for one of film's best sequences. Watching the character play "Guitar Hero" is comparably flat. That scene serves only one purpose: to demystify celebrity. While I wouldn't go so far as to call it boring, it doesn't offer any additional insight into the character.

But then "Somewhere" isn't just a portrait of a movie star but a portrait of a father, and Dorff and Elle Fanning deserve recognition for the flawlessly naturalistic relationship their characters share. Considered opposite her countless melodramatic peers, Coppola is in a league of her own. The people who populate her films never fail to impress with their nuance, but in this case I'm not convinced the filmmaking does them justice.

"Somewhere" is a film I find equally hard to love or hate, though I sympathize better with its detractors. Nevertheless, it posits compelling characters, great performances, and enough smart and amusing scenes to make worth recommending. Whether you leave the theater rubbing sleep from your eyes or having witnessed a minimalistic masterpiece, you have my blessing. Much like Marco himself, I'm neither here nor there.

Sofia Coppola has made movies based on personal experiences. Lost In Translation detailed on her relationship with then-husband, Spike Jonze. Marie Antoinette explained her stature as the daughter of a well-known figure who faces a new world full of strangers. Somewhere briefs us on how she felt when her father, Francis Ford Coppola was around.

But, that isn't what Somewhere is all about. Somewhere becomes the memories of the father, played by Stephen Dorff rather than the daughter, played by Elle Fanning. After I watched L.I.T, I thought Coppola has made an avant garde classic. After Marie Antoinette, I felt she could make an art film and could resemble a Kubrick heiress. But, Somewhere takes her nowhere. And, a GOLDEN "FREAKING" LION award?? You gotta be kidding me! The film excluding those long shots would be less than 60 minutes. How big was her screenplay? 55 pages? But, every filmmaker makes a bad film. Hell, Daddy Coppola made Jack!

'Somewhere' anatomizes the mindset of a man who has everything - except purpose. Johnny Marco is a thriving Hollywood actor but his soul is adrift on the sea of ennui which afflicts those to whom life denies nothing – he lacks meaningful relationships and doesn't know what to do with himself between projects.

In classic European art-house style Coppola evokes Marco's inner desolation through the extensive use of eccentrically framed, lingering, static, wide shots in which the focus of attention listlessly enters and leaves frame. And she does this relentlessly throughout the movie to the point that, like Marco, you just want to give up. Yes the guy is a bit defocused, a bit haunted and generally of a bit of a mid life plateau and yes these attributes are successfully evoked by the directorial style, but the result is so anodyne that you just want to watch a film about a guy with some real reasons to be miserable.

Naturally you're hoping he'll rediscover his mojo through his relationship with his daughter and work out what to do with his life but given the film's obvious anti-Hollywood credentials, you feel your optimism for any kind of resolution seeping away just like Johnny Marco's.

I imagine that if you are the daughter of a like-able, pampered but lost Marco figure, drowning in existential anxiety, then this character study is pretty poignant but it's really no more than a letter from Coppola to her father – and, of course, a gift to the type of film-goer for whom every aspect of the human condition, including boredom - is interesting.

Sometimes less is more; sometimes it's just less.

Sofia Coppola's personal cinema, in addition to being valuable and admirable, is also fascinating and endearing. I like his viewpoint on cinema. She is the daughter of the godfather of world cinema, Francis Ford Coppola, but she has not been under her father's shadow and stands in an area of cinema that her father was not in. Sofia's minimalist and personal cinema with its themes, concerns and worldview has made for her a special style in her films. The "somewhere", she made in 2010 has a specific form in structure and content. Relatively lengthful shots, fixed camera where the subject is moving in the frame and little dialogue are some of my favorite cinematographic features, which can be seen in abundance in Sofia Coppola's works. The beginning of the film in a fixed frame, where a black Ferrari car is constantly going back and forth, promises a different, fascinating and deep film, and in the final shot, which reminds me of a scene from my own short film (Saz and Khurshid). Johnny, played by Stephen Dorff, leaves the Ferrari on the side of the road and goes alone on the horizon. This is an amazing ending. The film only moves the camera when it is necessary and in line with the structure and content of the film, and this shows the awareness of the director. The film presents a paradox in the world of cinema. Johnny is a depressed, aimless, unmotivated and failed person from the inside and the reality of his life, while he is a prominent actor in the world of cinema and is glamorous.