I think I get Sofia Coppola’s schtick by now. Make a slow movie about a lonely, empty person who has lost touch with everything around him. He has submitted to routine and hedonism, not really feeling or perceiving anything but submitting to the will of the surrounding events. It’s a realistic premise because god knows life isn’t always exciting, but when I watch a film I want something, anything at all that will captivate me. It’s not that Coppola doesn’t know what she’s doing. She made Lost In Translation, a brilliant film that had virtually the same formula as Somewhere. Her problem isn’t that she uses a formula but more that I notice she does. Her films run through the motions without any of the intelligence and emotion infused into it that I know she is capable of. Johnny’s feeling of distance in this film is never explored, explained, or even really mentioned. His decision to change at the end is not so much an emotional moment of transcendence as much as the only logical place the film can go. None of it feels right. It’s difficult to make a film about empty people without the film itself being empty.
