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Movie Review: <em> Somewhere </em>

By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060

Lost in Translation was anything but.  The sparkling 2003 comedy by writer-director Sofia Coppola won her an Oscar for best original screenplay, earned her an Oscar nomination for best director, and ended forever her movie-world identity as "the daughter of Francis."

But this fourth outing by the younger Coppola auteur (The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette) is as problematic and maddening as Lost in Translation was disciplined and accomplished.

Somewhere is a life-in-Hollywood comedy-drama of manners that looks in on one Johnny Marco, a divorced celebrity played by Stephen Dorff who drives the sunny streets of Los Angeles in his black Ferrari and lives in a suite in the legendary Chateau Marmont Hotel, the infamous hangout for Hollywood's hotshots.

Johnny is a movie star, one who has, whatever the extent of his training or talent (in a word: limited), established himself as enough of a Tinseltown icon to be pursued by adoring groupies, invited to press junkets, and fawned over at makeup sessions -- and who is, no matter what the occasion, hung over a lot of the time.

Then one day his hedonistic lifestyle is interrupted when his eleven-year-old daughter, Cleo, played by the remarkable Elle Fanning, is dropped off unannounced by Johnny's estranged ex, who announces that Cleo will be staying with her dad for a stretch.

Okay, the reunited father and daughter can hang out and do for each other.  She can cook a little, he can take her to her ice skating practice, and she can accompany him on an upcoming promotional tour to Rome.

Not that he strenuously objects or anything, but this new responsibility is certainly cramping his self-gratifying style. As time goes on, though, he begins to see -- in a way he couldn't before -- the hollowness and aimlessness of his privileged-character existence, and the considerable distance between what he is in the eyes of the public and who he is in his own thoughts.

Unfortunately, while he's slowly coming to realize the emptiness of his existence, we're quickly coming to realize the emptiness of the film, one that features this forgettable cipher as its focal character and tests our patience while it begs for our attention.

To call the storyline "thin" and the pace "slow" would be extravagantly kind twice over.  There's nothing technically wrong with Dorff's performance, which is appropriately understated and perhaps born of real-life experience.  But he doesn't come close to making us care about this guy.

And although Fanning has long since demonstrated the same combination of talent, intelligence, and charm that her sister Dakota displayed so impressively, she's not in a position to rescue this soporific serving of stubborn self-indulgence and dragging it... somewhere else.

Whatever level of autobiographicality writer-director Coppola is tapping, she stumbles badly in her deadpan portrait of the mindless decadence, monotony, and ennui of the undeserving overprivileged.  There's just no narrative momentum to speak of.

And the ironic detachment and studied artificiality the director sustains throughout has the deadening effect of squeezing all traces of urgency and empathy out of the equation.

It's admittedly interesting to see how little Coppola depends on dialogue for exposition or insight.  But what's equally interesting and impossible to ignore, as the annoying narrative unfolds without revealing anything of consequence, is the pretentiousness involved in a project that never outruns or escapes its own pointlessness.

So we'll register under 1½ stars out of 4 for Sofia Coppola's minimalist exercise in emotionless awakening.

Somewhere isn't exactly nowhere. But it's in the same zip code.

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