rss feedA chip off the Ol’ Block: Sofia Coppola.
In the last 14 years, Sofia Coppola has become one of America’s most singular filmmakers by perfecting the cinematic art of haunting, emotional passivity. In her first four feature films, she has created evocative dream worlds of languishing arrest—an art-house anodyne to all of the muscle-bound blockbusters full of rage and speed. The Virgin Suicides (1999) depicts a small Michigan suburb and its reaction to a string of incomprehensible teen-girl suicides. (The suicides that afflicted the Lisbon family seem even to transpire without their victims’ full participation or understanding.) In Lost in Translation (2003), the plot revolves around the emotional swells of a young woman drifting around Tokyo, her own hotel room, and Bill Murray without a sense of purposeful direction. Marie Antoinette (2006) also focuses on a young woman whose fate was sealed by forces far larger than her. And in 2010′s ode to the Chateau Marmont, Somewhere, an actor passes through his own immobility and fracturing career—as well as his stilted relationship with his 11-year-old daughter—like a wanderer in a mildly inhabitable desert. Continue reading “A chip off the Ol’ Block: Sofia Coppola.” »
