Somewhere is the new film written and directed by Sophia Coppola. She is considered an artist, though stronger on mood, and atmospherics than story. She has been branded that way, but in fact her story, her narrative is extremely sublime; it is about the “gaze” and an exploration of it without objectifying it or fetishizing it. All this with a female aesthetic in which the body in this case male, and female in her previous Marie Antoinette; are in the artistic sense go beyond the traditional objective of being shown off and voyeuristically consumed. An absence of peep show titillation, plastic and paint.
Miriam Bale:In the second section, Dorff relearns how to participate, as he watches with surprise, glee, and disorientation how his daughter is becoming a woman. It's as if in seeing her beauty through a desexualized lens, he finally sees women as women, not groupies, and he awakens to his new role as protector, not consumer. The film shows masculinity from an objective distance, with details (the bedside table decorated with beer bottles and pills, the apple box he has to stand on for a photo op with a tall actress, and groans of pleasure cut short when he falls asleep during cunnilingus) that perhaps only a woman would note. To emphasize this objective yet stubbornly female gaze, the stationary camera remains low throughout (from the same low height that the short Chantal Ackerman filmed Jeanne Dielman, a film Ackerman said was literally from her own point of view,...http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/somewhere/5208
The film is about Johnny Macro ( Stephen Dorff ), a bad-boy B movie star between jobs who lives in the iconic Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip; despite the groupies, drugs and other pleasures, he does not really own his life. He is a tenant with some occupancy rights, though limited. Then his visit from his eleven year old daughter nudges him to the surface. It an exploration of the ostensibly devouring nature of celebrity, even at margins of the major league level. Celebrity as commodity; celebrity as some sort of cultural prostitute that drives demand for goods and services. Whether its Snooki or Justin Bieber or even John Travolta, there is not much difference. Except with Coppola it is. Somewhere is an experimental film with pop culture context. Its about exploring in-between spaces where people are not totally bereft of authenticity , but they are posing, but not obsessively so. Call it gaming theory where their lives are the fabrication of a meme of their own existence.
The pop psychology line suggests our obsession with celebrity may be the result of an unfulfilled quest for personal realization. A desire for a dose of exile; In this alternative universe, nothing is genuine. Everything under the artificial sun is performance, and, as a result, there is insecurity and self-created alienation, usually accompanied by some sort of collapse where someone take the place, or there is resurrection and rebirth. Coppola’s movie is about dislocation and the splintering of self and reflects her own seemingly obsession with the way wealth and fame disfigure people.
Bale: Then there is the final section, which is in some ways a repeat of the settings of the first section, but in which Dorff is now humanized. This particular evolution is inevitable, of course, but presented in a style and structure that's quietly revolutionary and totally assured. Most interesting is the distillation, but not complete absence of, overwrought dialogue. When the Dorff character does finally try to reveal his inner turmoil through words, it simply falls flat.http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/somewhere/5208. photo: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/5sxV2K_tNKU/Somewhere+Films+in+Italy/9fYJXCzXwA3/Stephen+Dorff
ADDENDUM:
Sofia Coppola attempts to portray the female figure in a different way then classical film. She attempts to use the sexual in such a way that it brings up issues about the female sexuality or provides depth into her characters. Also, while she attempts to keep the audience from viewing the female characters with the male gaze, she uses the gaze sparingly in her films. Rarely is it on the main character unless is provides significant insight in the character. In particular, Lost in Translation (2003) refrains from allowing Charlotte from being viewed in this way by Bob Harris. The female figure is portrayed differently then it would be in a classical film when directed by the female director. Some of this could do with the type of plot in the various films, but that also could mean that Coppola is consciously making an attempt to prevent the male gaze from occurring unless she has a specific reason for it. ( Paul Swendsrud )
Scott Foundas:If I seem more than a bit noncommittal about Somewhere, it’s because even after two viewings, the film strikes me as a tabula rasa that absorbs whatever you choose to project on to it and reflects back almost nothing. Is Somewhere a perceptive study in vacuousness, or merely a vacuous movie? Is Dorff delivering a master class in Kuleshovian inexpressiveness, or is he simply a comatose screen presence? Does Coppola want to eat the rich or merely to eat with them? The answer, I think, is all and none of the above. What did nearly infuriate me upon a first viewing was the sense that Coppola (whose previous films I admired) had fatally stepped outside of herself to make a “Sofia Coppola-type movie,” a capital-A (or capital-H?) hipster art film replete with distended scenes of nothing much happening, one pointless celebrity cameo (Benicio del Toro), and an indie-radio-ready musical score courtesy of the French alt-rock band Phoenix (whose leader, Thomas Mars, fathered her second child). Everything that had heretofore felt casual and effortless about Coppola’s work seemed, here, to be pre-meditated within an inch of its life....http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-45/currency-somewhere-sofia-coppola-us/ photo:
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