After the poster hit last week, it was only a matter of time until a trailer appeared for Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” (despite the film’s December 22nd release date), and our first look at the film has just gone online at Apple (via In Contention).
The film, widely expected to premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, seems to share a great deal of DNA with Coppola’s most successful film to date, “Lost In Translation” — with a plot involving a spoilt movie star based in a luxury hotel (in this case, the legendary Chateau Marmont in L.A.). Here, perennial B-lister Stephen Dorff plays the star, who is forced to spend time with his 11 year-old daughter (played by Elle Fanning, sister of Dakota). Here’s the synopsis from the official Facebook page:
Johnny Marco is a bad-boy A-list actor stumbling through a life of excess while living at Chateau Marmont Hotel. Cocooned in this artificial world, Johnny has lost all sense of his true self. Until, that is, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo shows up and begins to anchor him. Johnny’s fragile connection to real life slowly revives in her presence. So when the time comes for Cleo to leave, his sense of loss is palpable, but the gift of hope she has also brought him leads to a beautiful denouement.
There’s no sign of Coppola breaking out of the privileged bubble that infuriates so many of her critics, although, thankfully, her lyrical eye for an image is still intact. Dorff also looks like he might justify the many eyebrows raised when his casting was announced; while it’s hard to tell from a two minute clip, he already seems to be showing a range that we’ve not seen from the actor before, and at the very least the film may rescue his career the from DTV hell he’s been stranded in for much of the past decade.
There’s a brief glimpse of Michelle Monaghan, who appears to be playing a co-star of Dorff’s character, and “Jackass” star Chris Pontius, although there’s no sign of some of the other mooted cameos, which will include Benicio Del Toro and “Tetro” star Alden Ehrenreich.
Coppola’s impeccable ear for a good soundtrack (the film may not be much cop, but the “Marie Antoinette” two-disc soundtrack is a post-punk/new wave classic) is in evidence in the trailer; we hear a glimpse of Phoenix’s “Love Like A Sunset Pt. 1” (Coppola’s beau Thomas Mars is the frontman of the band, who are providing music for the film, and that track will feature heavily, according to guitarist Christian Mazzalai). But there’s also a rather thrilling trailer pick, in the shape of Strokes rarity “I’ll Try Anything Once,” Julian Casablancas’ demo version of third album highlight “You Only Live Once” — we’d be surprised if this didn’t turn up in the film somewhere.
We’re still cautiously optimistic about this one — generally speaking, The Playlist are big Coppola fans, and, while she hasn’t yet topped debut “The Virgin Suicides,” there are great pleasures to be found in all three of her movies. And in a year as cinematically terrible as this one has been so far, a new movie from Coppola is something to look forward to. Having said that, can we please call a moratorium on people playing “Guitar Hero” in movies?