Somewhere

Review by Willard Manus

Poor Johnny Marco. As played by Stephen Dorff in SOMEWHERE, Sofia Coppola's latest film, he's a rich and famous movie star who is soooo bored with his life. Nothing puts a smile on his face or engages his interest. He lives in a suite at the Chateau Marmont, drives a Ferrari, has one beautiful woman after another trying to get in his pants. Despite all the money and adulation, he mopes around like a man who's worked fifty years in a mortuary, chain-smoking, swilling alcohol and popping pills, contemplating suicide.

The only time Johnny lightens up is when his 12-year-old daughter from his failed marriage visits him. Cleo (the sprightly Elle Fanning) is a great kid who loves ice-skating, Air Guitar and cooking--and yearns to spend more time with her dad. Their relationship is the only meaningful one in the movie, but Johnny is such a cipher--one of the living dead, really-- that he can't even show Cleo any love. He's just too damn bored for anything as basic and simple as that.

Coppola's intent is to have the bored Johnny Marco symbolize the emptiness and decadence of our celebrity-mad, materialistic society. She defeats her own purpose, though, by making a boring film about a boring person.