Trailer for Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere"

The trailer for Sofia Coppola's new film Somewhere has just been released.  I have high hopes for this film, because, in many ways, it seems like a similar project to her Lost in Translation, which was one of my favorite movies of the last decade.  Stephen Dorf, an actor who's career has cooled considerably in recent years (speaking of which, whatever happened to Skeet Ulrich?) stars in this movie as, ironically, an A-list Hollywood actor living in the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard and taking advantage of all of the excesses a young, rich, spoiled actor has at his disposal. (You know, the three B's, Booze, Broads and Bdrugs.)  His lifestyle changes dramatically when his eleven year old daughter shows up to live with him.   Much like Lost in Translation, the movie is about a lost soul not so much in search of redemption, but rather an anchor; an eye opener; a reminder of the real world and the person he was before the onslaught of celebrity bullshit caused a disconnect.   

What I really loved about Lost in Translation was not the clever script, or even the performances, but rather Coppola's ability to create mood and feeling.   She did an excellent job with that picture of capturing loneliness, isolation, that feeling of being far from home and adrift and how important a human connection can really be.  Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are both wonderful in the movie, but Coppola was the real star of the show.  I really enjoyed her directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, but when she delivered Lost as a follow-up, she had clearly arrived as a young director with immense promise. The movie has several scenes light on dialog but heavy on emotion and meaning, and it's a skill that is not often found in American film makers who usually have to dumb-down their projects and hit the audience over the head with their intentions lest some pimple faced kid at the mall fills out his suggestion card saying he didn't 'get' the ending at an advance screening and the Hollywood Marketing Team demands re-shoots.   This project seems thematically to be similar to Lost in Translation, and while I'd love to see Coppola spread her wings in terms of the stories she tells and the themes she tackles, this trailer seems decidedly vague so the film itself might differ more from Translation then it appears.  Either way I'm eagerly anticipating this movie.

Somewhere will arrive in theatres on December 22nd, 2010.