FILM

Sofia Coppola’s ‘Somewhere’ is the tale of an excess-all-areas Hollywood A-lister’s relationship with his young daughter. A tad autobiographical perhaps?

After the critical pasting she received for her third feature, 'Marie Antoinette', it is perhaps unsurprising that Sofia Coppola should return to the themes of dislocation and loneliness that characterised her Oscar-winning breakthrough film, 2003's 'Lost in Translation'. 'Somewhere' is the story of a young Hollywood star named Johnny Marco, played by Stephen Dorff. On the surface, he has it all. He's rich, he's successful and he's the embodiment of the Hollywood celebrity dream, with a suite at the Chateau Marmont hotel with its own swimming pool (no, really), a queue of beautiful women eager to sleep with him, and an instant party breaking out wherever he goes. But behind the successful façade, Marco is lonely and at a crossroads in his life. As self-destruction beckons, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) shows up and changes everything.

As the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, the director obviously had the opportunity to witness much of this stuff while she was growing up. So naturally the question arises as to how much of the script is autobiographical. How much of Cleo is the young Sofia Coppola, for example? "She’s based on my friend’s daughter, who is kind of in that Hollywood world," she reveals. "She’s kind of more together than the parents are, but yeah, I definitely put some of myself in that. I remember as a kid going to visit my dad. Kids are always aware of people’s motives and things around that world."

What about Stephen Dorff? Is Johnny Marco based on him? "No, I wasn’t basing the character on him, but I thought about him playing that guy because I know he’s really sweet and has a lot of heart, which is sort of a contrast to the other stuff going on. It's a great contrast to that lifestyle that you see and that kind of macho guy that he plays. I liked that there was this other side to him that was sweet and then I thought about bringing in the character of the daughter and I knew that he would be nice with the kid."

Coppola first visited the legendary Chateau Marmont as a little girl. Later, in her 20s, she had an opportunity to witness Hollywood's hip party crowd disporting themselves there. When it came to choosing the locations for 'Somewhere', there was no second choice. "It definitely had to be the Chateau, and I’m always like that. My producers want back up choices but I never have a Plan B. I don’t have a back up like that - I have an idea and I have to figure out how to do it, or not do it, but the Marmont was essential to Johnny’s story. That kind of guy would stay at the Chateau Marmont, so to me it doesn’t work somewhere else. It’s part of that iconic element of the LA culture."

Equally authentic are the pole dancers who appear at one of Johnny's private parties. Twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon are the lucky Playboy playmates who were personally selected by Hugh Hefner to be two of his three girlfriends. They are also the stars of US reality TV show 'The Girls Next Door'. Coppola had to visit the Playboy Mansion personally to recruit them. It's rather difficult to picture the Indie Queen knocking on Mr. Hefner's front door. "I know, it’s pretty funny. It was fun, though. I had this idea of these characters that were twins, and my friend watches the reality show that they are on and she said, ‘Oh you’ve got to meet those twins!’ So we met them and they were really bubbly and enthusiastic and we thought, ‘Oh, they’re perfect.’ And they’re cute too; they have a freshness to them…"

So were they filming the reality show while she was there? "Yeah they were. I thought, I can’t believe I’m doing this but we are in LA, we’ll just embrace the whole town," she laughs.

So what, ultimately, is she trying to say with the film? Is it an expression of moral disapproval of the Hollywood drink'n'drugs'n'promiscuity lifestyle? "I can have fun too," she laughs. "But I think if your life is consistently indulging, where there is not any kind of balance with something real, that’s not so good. Maybe it’s fun at the beginning but after a while where is it going? I’m just looking at our fascination with celebrity culture and that phenomenon we have now where so many people want to be famous, but is that really fulfilling at the end of the day?"

'Somewhere' opened on Fri 10. For review click here.
 

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