Some­where

Get ready to get angry. Sofia Coppola’s Gold­en Lion-win­ning mus­ing about a self-loathing actor liv­ing the high-life of pills, pilsen­ers, cig­a­rettes and pussy while resid­ing in five-star lux­u­ry is sure to invoke audi­ence angst.

Set pre­dom­i­nant­ly in a Château Mar­mont hotel room, Stephen Dorff’s Jon­ny Mar­co, a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful actor, wal­lows in self-pity as he man­ages to string togeth­er a life pro­mot­ing his projects, chas­ing tail, and deal­ing with the para­noia par­celled with his profile.

The set­ting neces­si­tates unfair com­par­isons to Lost in Trans­la­tion. Unfair because there is no way Dorff can hold our atten­tion in the (many) qui­et moments as well as the inim­itable Bill Mur­ray. And unfair because the over-treat­ment of LA onscreen takes away the voy­age of dis­cov­ery on which Cop­po­la car­ried us in her Japan­ese-infused masterpiece.

That the film rests so heav­i­ly on Dorff’s shoul­ders is inter­est­ing. Cop­po­la could have had her choice of actors in the role, and many cinephiles would be hard-pressed to name a cou­ple of choice Dorff per­for­mance. Couldn’t it even be pro­posed that Dorff’s best trait is often tracked to the ways that he reminds us of oth­er actors?

As the daugh­ter dumped on her dad by a mum who’s find­ing things too hard to han­dle, Elle Fan­ning is the pic­ture of ded­i­cat­ed inno­cence – she’s adept at whip­ping up a mag­i­cal eggs Bene­dict; fig­ure skates with poise; plays a mean game of Gui­tar Hero; and, final­ly, man­ages to deliv­er a dose of real­i­ty to her action star father who is idly allow­ing life in the fast lane to slow him down.

Fan­ning is the film’s finest ele­ment, fas­ci­nat­ing to watch and fab­u­lous at allow­ing her char­ac­ter to exude nat­u­ral­ism in the over­ly-man­u­fac­tured environment.

The film is pep­pered with indus­try sit­u­a­tions ripe for ridicule, which seem to owe much to Coppola’s own expe­ri­ences – a faux press jun­ket con­fer­ence pokes fun at the ques­tions asked by inter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists (made fun­nier by the fact that they’re so accu­rate); while a pro­mo­tion­al tour of Italy cou­ples incred­i­ble accom­mo­da­tions with Marco’s unfor­tu­nate appear­ance on a Euro­pean dance/​awards show.

And yet despite the score by Phoenix, and a sound­track fea­tur­ing Foo Fight­ers, Gwen Ste­fani, Sting, Bryan Fer­ry, The Strokes and Kiss, the film ser­e­nades its view­ers with a slew of sug­ges­tive silences. Even the many scenes set in and about Marco’s Fer­rari lack the usu­al radio sounds, Cop­po­la instead focus­ing in on the growls of the engine as it bounces up and down Sun­set Blvd, the Hol­ly­wood Hills and the Mojave Desert.

It is in these moments minus-sound that the film finds its foot­ing, forc­ing us to watch the actors onscreen deal­ing with every­day banal­i­ties amid the may­hem of movie star rituals.

But are these moments enough to set Some­where apart from oth­er self-aware explo­rations of the actor’s life, or apart from oth­er Château Mar­mont wan­der­ings? Unlike­ly, perhaps.

Sofia Coppola’s fourth, curi­ous­ly and unfor­tu­nate­ly, seems des­tined to be quick­ly forgotten.