The brand of Johnny’s jeans or sneakers cannot be recognized from the movie, and the audience can see the car he drives. "Somewhere" starts with Johnny driving a black Ferrari sports car as he goes round and round in the desert around Los Angeles. Ferrari is eye-catching, but it can't hold the lens longer than two minutes. If you think this long shot is somewhat boring, that's right, director Sophia Coppola's comedy shows the extremely boring side of superior life. Judging from the movie's positioning for Johnny, he should be regarded as a Hollywood star. In addition to wearing an old T-shirt and driving a top-grade car, which looks super cool, he lives in an unusual place. Johnny uses the Chateau Marmont on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard as his home all year round, just like many famous movie stars and rock singers. There is a scene in "Somewhere" in which the movie star Benicio de Toro appears in a friendly role, playing an unnamed role. He meets Johnny in the elevator of the Chateaumont Hotel.
De Toro asked, "Which room do you live in?"
Johnny replied, "Room 59."
De Toro said, "I saw Bono in room 59." He was expressionless. Bono is one of the most famous and active rock singers in the world and the lead singer of the U2 band.
Johnny didn't have any expressions either. He said, "That's very interesting."
There are not many things in the world that can excite this group of people. Johnny was able to hire pole dancers to perform alone in his room. The twin blonde sisters worked very hard. They obviously hoped to fully embody the sensibility of the special artistic style of pole dancing, but Johnny fell asleep in the music and dancing. It is not that he has no sexual needs. His problem is that his sexual needs are too easy to be satisfied. There are many people who take the initiative to open their minds to him in the movie. I use "open mind" without any metaphor, because the film uses a straightforward lens. He can hook up with pretty girls at will, and he can be so bored that he drives a Ferrari to track a strange woman in a Mercedes convertible, but when the scene is at its peak, he can't stop himself from falling asleep. When did a worse way of hurting women's self-esteem appear on the movie screen? So it’s no surprise that Johnny’s mobile phone often receives text messages cursing him with nasty language such as Asshole and Hot Shit. Is there any way to fill his emptiness?
This is Sophia Coppola's fourth work. As one of the few practitioners of "author films" today, all her works are self-written and directed, with consistent perspectives and artistic expression techniques. For example, like her work "Lost in Translation" (Lost in Translation) a few years ago, this movie tells the life of an actor. Sophia comes from the royal family in the American film industry. Her father, Francis Coppola, the director of "The Godfather", once planned to buy the Chateaumont Hotel. From every detail in the movie, we can see how familiar she is with the film industry. There are several medicines in Johnny's bathroom, and the focus is on the Propecia medicine box. This medicine is used to deal with problems related to the secretion of male hormones. Like "Lost in Tokyo", the core scene of "Somewhere" is a hotel, and the comedy effects of the movie include watching TV in a room in a foreign hotel. The former is the male protagonist watching a Japanese-style evening talk show, and the male host on the screen is dressed up and talks extremely noisy and exaggerated. The latter is the actor watching "Friends", Jennifer Aniston's English lines disappear, and she speaks Italian. A very important part of an actor's life is public relations and entertainment. The male protagonists in the two films involve makeup, taking pictures, and answering mentally retarded questions from reporters.
The more important thing is the heroine. Every movie of Sophia Coppola creates a female image that is not easy to forget quickly. Apart from all this familiarity, I can still harvest surprises. The protagonists of her first film, "The Virgin Suicides" (The Virgin Suicides), are five young girls in the blooming season. In the second film "Lost in Tokyo", Scarlett Johansson plays a young woman in her 20s who is just married. Although the protagonist of the third film "Marie Antoinette" (Marie Antoinette) was in her teens when she married French king Louis XVI, the focus of the film is that she entered the court life after Versailles until she was executed by the revolutionaries at the age of 37. . After a few movies, the screenwriter and director Sophia herself has evolved from a 28-year-old young man to a mother of two children who is nearly 40 years old. I once had vague expectations that the heroine in her next movie should face themes such as contraception, inadvertent contraception leading to pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum depression, breastfeeding is better than infant formula, but unexpectedly, In Somewhere, the heroine is a little girl who has not yet entered puberty.
She is Johnny’s daughter Creo, the most attractive preteen girl in the movies I have ever seen, and the only one who can stand alongside her is Natalie Portman in The Professional. Sophia used many proper techniques to express Creo's charm. She danced on the ice, she dived in the swimming pool, and she knew how to use the iPhone to record the car license plates of the paparazzi who tracked Johnny. She is familiar with the life of a star and also knows to enjoy it. At the Chateaumont Hotel, or when traveling to Italy with his father, Creo would ask the waiter to deliver food to the room. She even asked them to deliver all kinds of raw materials to the room, and then personally cooked ham and omelette for Johnny and his friends for breakfast.
Johnny didn't have many opportunities to get along with his daughter. Clio's beautiful ice dance surprised him. He didn't know that his daughter started training three years ago. Creo mainly lives with her mother, Johnny's ex-wife. For some reason, she will spend a few more days with her father this summer vacation. During this period of time, through traveling together and playing Nintendo Wii game consoles together, the father-daughter relationship has been deepened like never before. Johnny realized that the only real connection between himself and the world was his daughter.
The child star Elle Fanning who plays Clio is only 12 years old this year. Her performance in this movie is worthy of an Oscar nomination. In the scene directly facing several adult women who provoke Johnny, her expression and eyes convey the unique hostility that only exists between her daughter and father’s sexual partners. A bit too much. Sophia Coppola's films often make a female star, such as Scarlett Johansson and Kirsten Dunst. They may not be discovered by Sophia first, but through cooperation with her, these young actors have been able to establish milestones in their careers. Elle Fanning is another example.
Exaggerated actions, facial expressions, and pretending to be silly can indeed be funny. There are a lot of slapstick-style vulgar comedies produced in the United States, but I only like a few of them such as Woody Allen, or new styles like Sophia Coppola. A generation of directors. Relying on the keen, meticulous and precise observation of life, coupled with the wisdom, wit and artistic expression of the storyteller, serious topics and calm narratives can also bring the audience a full sense of comedy. This feeling may be more lasting, at least more suitable for adults.
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