Mark Reviews Movies: SOMEWHERE (2010)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 21, 2010

Sofia Coppola has the uncanny ability of recreating the pace of life in a form of cinematic naturalism (like its theatrical counterpart but more about the overarching rhythm than the attempt to faithfully represent life), where the significance of events is only understood fully by the characters on screen, left to the audience to divine. Most of the occurrences in Somewhere are of the most ordinary nature—driving, playing video games, lounging by a pool. Sometimes the characters are entirely passive—a man lying in bed watching a pair of pole dancers he's hired, a father admiring his daughter as she practices her ice-skating routine, the two sitting and politely listening to a man sing a very professionally amateurish but enthusiastic version of "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear."

He happens to be a famous actor—this man, this father—so he doesn't spend too much time with his daughter. After watching her rehearsing her piece on the ice, he asks when she learned to skate so well. She's been taking lessons for three years, she replies. There's no judgment in the response—this is her dad, after all, around or not—and his reaction is one of surprise. He really didn't know she knew how to skate so well.

The rest of his time with her, extended by her mother's unexpected trip away to spend some time on her own, is spent trying to make up for that oversight and every other unspoken failing it represents.

The actor is Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff). When we first see him, he is inside his sports car, driving around a track in a circle. The camera stays stationary as the car makes laps—sometimes it's in the frame, others you can hear its sound approaching or fading, and the rest is silence. It's an obvious metaphor but an appropriate one that sums up everything we need to know about him, too. Here is a man going in circles with no start, no end, and no destination.

He doesn't even have a home, making his residence at the Chateau Marmont Hotel with his brother Sammy (Chris Pontius) and a stream of visitors for late-night parties that start before Johnny even returns to call it a night. At one of them, he falls down some stairs and breaks his arm.

The pole dancers seem a nightly ritual. He lies in bed, a drink in his hand, just ogling these women (twins, no less, whom he confuses) without any passion or emotion. It's like a warm glass of milk—a vision of the pathetic.

Johnny has people in his life. His brother, his friends, the makeup artists who put his head in a plaster mold, only telling him the process will take 40 minutes to complete after he is covered in the stuff (Coppola holds on him for what seems a small eternity—the sound of his breathing the only sign of life, which is, again, a clear-cut but fitting image) are there. Even an anonymous woman (or possibly women) leaving insulting text messages to his phone is part of whatever facsimile of life he maintains.

When his daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) arrives, though, that all changes. The energy in any room the two are in together morphs. It is no longer dismal; Johnny is happy. They laugh. They talk. He checks his actions (or at least becomes aware of them) because of her. When he involuntarily turns his head at the sight of a pretty woman, he notices Cleo's look—an impossible to describe countenance that is neither disgust nor amusement but something in between and not disapproving.

This, too, is the spirit of Coppola's film. It merely observes these two as they, for possibly the first time in a long time, actually spend an extended period of time together. Coppola's screenplay finds the sympathy in the surreal lifestyle of a rich and famous man. The studio sends him a driver for a day for the makeup session, and he has him make a side-trip to see a woman he knows. They enjoy a swim in their private swimming pool during a publicity trip to Italy (The awards show at which he accepts an honorary statuette is an absurdist trip to pointless excess with giant gold statues and dancing girls). Cleo needs to get to summer camp, and in a last effort to spend one more day with his daughter, Johnny has them flown by helicopter to the bus station, making a quick stop in Las Vegas where he teaches her the ins and outs of craps.

Somewhere is a film of small, inconsequential moments that add up to an experience of some consequence. Like the beginning, the final scenes show Johnny driving without much purpose, until he finally just stops. Walking away, his back to the camera, he goes. Perhaps he has one, specific destination in mind, but at least, for once in his sad life, he is heading somewhere.

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