Rob says SOMEWHERE Is Every Bit As Poignant As LOST IN TRANSLATION, If Not Quite As Fresh

rating: 4

(Rob's Venice Review Re-Posted As The Film Is On U.K. Release From Tomorrow) Comparisons have already been drawn between Sofia Coppola's new film, Somewhere, and her most celebrated, signature work, Lost in Translation. Even before the film premiered today in Venice. And there are lots of similarities, to be sure. Both films look at an isolated actor, alone in a crowd, who only feels alive around a young girl (in this case his daughter). Both films also take a humorous look at travel to a foreign land (this time Italy) with all the cross-cultural challenges that presents, as well as looking inward at the film industry itself, via press conferences, award ceremonies and interactions with other actors (including a cameo I won't spoil). They are shot with long, often-static (or else slowly zooming), takes which linger on the action (or inaction) for minutes at a time, sometimes uncomfortably, but always in a way which is beautifully composed. Somewhere follows a big, Hollywood mega-star, Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), over the course of a few days in his life. We witness his excessive partying, his inability to look after himself and his lack of any real connections to the world. That is except for his 11 year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning), who turns up at her father's hotel one day whilst her mum is going through some unspecified crisis. Initially Johnny is bored, his eye always straying to the nearest beautiful woman. But he slowly begins to take notice and comes to examine what he is missing his own shell of an existence. That is the film in terms of plot. But as usual, there is much more to it than that. It is really a catalogue of well observed vignettes as Johnny drives his car in circles and makes too much pasta. Even traditionally exciting activities are amusingly played as banal here, as two long pole-dance sequences - featuring a pair of blonde twins - are shown as empty, boring and sort of sad experiences. They are somehow rendered all the more pathetic by the twins' vacuous enthusiasm and the synchronised nature of their routine - which robs them of any individual identity, and with it goes the chance for Marco to make a real connection with them. The same can be said of a shot of a number of slender models whose faces are blurred by the sunlight. Only their bodies are visible in a version of LA which is, for the actor, faceless. Fitting then that the texts of abuse he receives from a spurned lover are always attributed to a private number rather then a name. Another scene sees Johnny woken up and informed he is due to drive into an effects studio to have a replica of his head made. When he gets there he is covered in plaster and told not to move, even his eyes or mouth, for forty minutes. And we feel like we are there for that long, during another sustained shot of the actor, sitting still, alone and now an anonymous nothing himself, with his face completely concealed. This isn't the world of Entourage. It is something more melancholic and introspective. Neither is it especially chatty with about four scenes before any significant dialogue is spoken. Rather it is visual, even poetic. As with Lost in Translation, there is a lot of humour here too, especially in Coppola's depiction of fame. This played especially well in a room of journalists, as it rang so painfully true. A press conference is depicted as a place for pretentious and long-winded questions, many of them meaningless and superficial. "Who is Johnny Marco?" asks one, "what are your workout secrets?" says another. Marco is asked about his position as a role model for Italians, the film's environmental message and whether he wants to visit China - and if you haven't been to a press conference before: that is exactly what they are like. It was clearly a thinly veiled admission of either indifference or discomfort from the director who, at the film's own press conference, gave short polite answers to even the longest and most complex of questions. Even her "director's statement" in the official festival catalogue is only one short sentence long, reading, simply enough: "I wanted to make an intimate portrait of a man's existential crisis in contemporary Los Angeles". When asked whether the swimming pools in her films were symbolic, she replied that she hadn't thought about it. When one reporter enquired why this and Lost in Translation take place in hotels, she said it was in part down to the fact she spent a lot of time in hotels, growing up with her father. But it is ok that she is so succinct, because she does her talking with cinema, playing to its unique strengths as visual art form. In Sofia Coppola films you are more often shown than told, which is rare. As funny as it is, Dorff is not the source of much humour in the way Bill Murray was in the other movie. He is played very straight, very plain - but with touching empathy. Elle Fanning (the younger sister of Dakota) is beguiling and clearly has a great intelligence behind her acting, able to give looks which portray a lot behind the eyes. Both convince during the tender father and daughter scenes, of which there are many. It be hard for Coppola to escape the claims that she is re-treading much of the same ground covered in a near perfect original. But Somewhere is a consistent delight all of its own. I feel that if it had come out first, then this would be the film to which Lost in Translation was being unfavourably compared, in the same way that Wes Anderson's recent films are never afforded the same enthusiasm that greeted Rushmore. Somewhere is, to my mind, every bit as poignant, funny and entertaining as Lost in Translation, if not quite as fresh. Somewhere will be released on Dec. 24th in the U.S. and then March 4th in the U.K.