A huge fan of Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation, I eagerly awaited the release of her new film, Somewhere. But upon leaving the cinema I wasn't quite sure whether I had enjoyed the experience or not.
The first, perhaps, 45 minutes of the film are almost completely silent; whilst I understood that this was probably to demonstrate the vacuous and empty life of Stephen Dorff's character, I felt like it was massively overstated and found myself swinging between appreciating the quality of the film making and the cleverness of some of the visual metaphors to being monumentally bored and frustrated, especially with the lack of accompanying music.
The entrance of the daughter brought the film to life... almost. I definitely enjoyed it more from that point on at least. Clio's presence made use of the fantastic soundtrack that I had heard snippets of before seeing the film and she literally brought colour and life to Johnny's character and, thankfully, to the screen.
Whilst Lost in Translation was full of subtle nuances and precious little moments, I felt as if Somewhere was too literal in its depiction of "Celebrity leads empty life, cue entrance of estranged daughter to bring colour to his world and change his ways etc." and was very close to treading old ground; the disjointed phone calls from an ex/wife, the references to the artificiality and emptiness of celebrity life, and the scene where Johnny wins an award on an Italian show reminded me immediately of the hilarious scene in LIT where Bob Harris entertains on a Japanese talk-host show.
I'm probably being too hard on Coppola; when the credits rolled I was definitely close to tears and couldn't even explain why. And in hindsight I spoke fondly of the film and still maintain that it wasn't by any means badly made - the film looks beautiful and I expected it to.
Perhaps if Somewhere had come first it would have stood more of a chance.
