Somewhere, deep within the glittery void of Los Angeles ennui, Sofia Coppola made a movie about a man who is bored. And then she dared the audience to become more bored than him.
“Somewhere” is that dare.
Released in 2010, Coppola’s film opens with a Ferrari circling a desert racetrack in long, wordless loops. That’s not a metaphor — I mean it literally. It goes in circles. Over. And over. And over again. It’s a perfect visual summary of the next 98 minutes: elegant, aimless, and emotionally bankrupt. Somewhere between art film and NyQuil overdose, this is a movie that stares into its own navel and finds absolutely nothing worth filming — and then films it anyway.
The Plot (Or: A Lack Thereof)
Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a vaguely famous Hollywood actor living in L.A.’s iconic Chateau Marmont. His life is a soulless blur of cigarettes, sex, strippers, and room service. He’s spiritually bankrupt, emotionally constipated, and mostly horizontal. The twist? He’s got a daughter, Cleo, played with alarming sincerity by Elle Fanning, who comes to stay with him and gently tugs at what’s left of his humanity.
That’s it. That’s the movie.
If you’re waiting for conflict, drama, or anything that might resemble a character arc, you’d be better off watching your ceiling fan. At least that spins.
Direction: Stuck in the Gilded Slow Lane
Sofia Coppola directs with the precision of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing — which makes it even more maddening. She captures the sterile beauty of LA’s elite emptiness, frames everything with an oppressive stillness, and drains her actors of expression until they resemble well-dressed corpses.
It’s as if she dared herself to make a movie where nothing happens — and then doubled down by making sure it happens very slowly. Long takes of Dorff staring into space. Strippers performing robotic pole routines in his suite. A lazy poolside breakfast with Fanning. More staring. More silence. Every moment holds the promise of emotional depth, but just when it might arrive — cut to black. Or worse, a helicopter shot of Los Angeles.
“Somewhere” has all the urgency of a coma and the emotional impact of a luxury lotion commercial.
Stephen Dorff: Sleepy in the Lead
Casting Stephen Dorff as the lead is either genius or sabotage, and I’m still not sure which. He’s perfectly blank — and maybe that’s the point. He plays Johnny Marco as a man so dead inside that even his hangovers look bored. Dorff spends most of the film slouched in various chairs, blinking slowly, and reacting to topless women with the energy of a man reading a cereal box.
Yes, it’s probably “realistic” for a jaded celebrity. But if I wanted to spend 98 minutes watching a guy emotionally drift through his day, I’d follow my upstairs neighbor.
Elle Fanning: The Only Living Human
The lone beam of sunlight in this ghost-white void is Elle Fanning, who plays Cleo with charm, restraint, and emotional honesty. She’s warm, curious, and heartbreakingly patient with her emotionally comatose father. When she cries after he forgets to attend her ice skating recital, it’s one of the few moments where the film allows something resembling a heartbeat. For one brief, shimmering scene, “Somewhere” flirts with the idea of a soul.
Then we cut back to Johnny Marco watching twin strippers spin around in circles. Because… cinema.
Themes: Hollywood Is Empty, We Get It
Coppola has a consistent obsession with isolation amid luxury. “Lost in Translation” explored it with nuance. “Marie Antoinette” chewed on it with powdered-sugar decadence. But “Somewhere” strips it down to its bleakest form and dares you to care. And therein lies the problem: it feels like a concept stretched into a feature without the benefit of a script.
This is an art-house mood board. A moving Instagram filter. An elegy for people who are too rich to die and too numb to live. Yes, we understand: fame is hollow, celebrity is isolating, and money doesn’t buy meaning. That’s a perfectly valid thesis — it’s just been done better in literally hundreds of other films. Here, it’s whispered from inside a marble hotel room and smothered under a duvet of slow cinema pretension.
Style Over Substance Over Everything
Coppola shoots like a fashion photographer with severe depression. The color palette is lovely — faded golds, sterile whites, muted blues — but the style is so dominant it strangles the experience. There’s no score. No momentum. The pacing is a form of punishment.
It’s like she read a book on existentialism, tossed out all the plot, and left only the ennui.
The Ending (Spoiler: Nothing Happens)
In the final scene, Johnny Marco drives into the desert, ditches his car, and wanders off into the horizon like he’s about to start a new life — or maybe a long nap. It’s ambiguous. It’s quiet. It’s utterly unearned. Nothing in the previous 90 minutes suggests Johnny has changed. If anything, he just got bored of his own storyline and walked off the set.
I didn’t blame him.
Final Verdict
“Somewhere” is a film with all the emotional resonance of a scented candle flickering in a luxury spa. It’s beautiful, yes. It’s intentional. It’s artful in a way that might impress your film school professor.