A charming father/daughter comedy

 

    Sophia Coppola brings a light but knowing touch to On the Rocks, a comedy that teams Bill Murray and Rashida Jones and is bound to evoke memories of Murray's terrific turn in 2003's Lost in Translation, another movie in which he teamed with Coppola. 

    But this is a different Murray, at once more familiar but also cracking open new terrain as a father who believes that he must  help his daughter (Jones) determine whether her husband is cheating.

     Murray's performance is so engaging, it's easy to forget that Jones keeps pace. She portrays Laura, a Manhattan novelist who's juggling motherhood (two young children) and a stalled attempt at writing a new mystery. She also suspects that her husband (Marlon Wayans) is having an affair. 

     It's not difficult to understand why Laura has become  suspicious. Frustrated and harried, she's pretty much on her own. Wayans' Dean constantly travels for work, some sort of tech business that seems to be booming. 

     And what's that woman's cosmetic bag doing in Dean's  suitcase anyway?

    Coppola captures a level of Manhattan living in which no one spends much time worrying about money and in which busy lives are the norm. The movie's surfaces are warm and inviting, but On the Rocks boasts just enough depth to kick superficiality to the curb. 

     The story opens with Murray's Felix speaking to his then young daughter. "Remember, don't give your heart to any boys. You're mine until you're married. Then you're still mine."

     This kind of statement could have opened a door to psychological waters in which another movie might have drowned. 

      But as the story unfolds, we learn that Felix views his daughter as a companion and playmate. And despite frequent expressions of exasperation, Laura enjoys meeting her father's expectations. 

     Murray makes it easy to see just how persuasive Felix can be as a man of relaxed charm and good humor. He's rich, well-traveled, appealing and obviously smart enough to have made a small fortune in the art business, wealth that entitles him to move about the city in a chauffeur-driven limousine. 

     He also owns a classic sports car, the centerpiece of a very funny scene. Watching Felix talk a New York cop out of giving him a speeding ticket makes for a richly humorous pleasure. 

      When it comes to male and female behavior, though , Felix remains happily "unwoke." As an experienced philanderer, he  knows enough about men to be confident in his judgment.

      Although he fudges a bit here and there, we suspect he's certain that Dean is cheating. Of course, the male behavior Felix knows best is his own.

     The movie's plot finds Felix suggesting a variety of measures to track Dean's movements. 

      By the time Felix and Laura follow Dean to a Mexico, traces of sitcom thinking have begun to peek through. Still, the Mexican setting allows Murray to sing a surprisingly sweet version of Mexicali Rose.     

        From the start, it's clear that Coppola plans to travel first class, putting us into luxe Manhattan settings, swank restaurants, and upper-crust parties. She's selling a New York fantasy that's difficult to resist. 

    And in these COVID times, not only does resistance seem pointless, it would be downright foolish.  Obviously, Coppola had no idea that her movie would hit during a pandemic. But On the Rocks qualifies as a smart piece of escapism and a perfect antidote to the desperation of the moment. Enjoy.

'Bling Ring' explores a gimme-more ethos

Sophia Coppola's latest is lively, engaging and a little too obvious.

The Bling Ring might be director Sophia Coppola's liveliest film to date. Working with a mostly unfamiliar cast of young actors, Coppola brilliantly recreates the morality-free atmosphere in which a group of California teen-agers set out to burglarize the homes of celebrities.

In looking at these materialistic, style-obsessed young people, Coppola can't help but make us complicit in their avaricious ways. Would you turn away if you had an opportunity to look into Paris Hilton's closets? Would you decline if offered a chance to savor a bit of the opulence that surrounds some of the well-heeled folks in show business?

Coppola's flash-obsessed characters understand that at certain social levels, the car you drive and shoes you wear can be taken as worthy expressions of character. She knows that to some, a watch is more than an instrument with which to tell time: It's a statement of status and taste, a bejeweled form of validation that puts one in the same high-living stratosphere as the those who get recognized -- even if it's only for being recognizable.

The Bling Ring does not tell a story about latter-day Robin Hoods. These high-schoolers don't rob from the rich and give to the poor. They rob from the rich for their own amusement -- half expecting that their victims are so well stocked they won't notice anyway. They seem to be children of affluence upset that they're not children of monstrous money. For them, theft becomes a perverted form of shopping.

F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly told Ernest Hemingway that the rich "are different from you and me." Hemingway supposedly replied, "Yeah, they have more money."

These kids believe that the line between the rich and them easily can be blurred: The rich accumulate; so do these youngsters. Does it really matter how they cross the acquisitive threshold to get to the diamond-studded goodies?

Rebecca (Katie Chang) is the author of the burglary scheme. Rebecca enlists the help of her pal Marc (Israel Broussard), a new kid at her school. Together, they invade Paris Hilton's home after reading (on-line, of course) that Hilton is out of town.

The gang also includes Sam (Taissa Farmiga) and Nicki (Emma Watson), teens who are being home-schooled by a mother (Leslie Mann) who specializes in motivational aphorisms. Chloe (Claire Julien) also joins the group, which occasionally expands to include other teen-agers, as well.

Together, these youngsters apply the art of breaking and entry at the homes of various celebrities.

In some ways, The Bling Ring is a glitzy sociological exercise that reveals what life is like in a strata impenetrable to most of us. Fueled by a near ravenous energy, The Bling Ring eventually begins to look like an episode of something we might call "Lifestyles of the rich and vapid."

Mostly, these young thieves are oblivious to any moral and psychological implications of a) taking other people's stuff and b) craving all these expensive trinkets in the first place.

These are cunning, self-absorbed kids. In her best performance to date, Watson (of Harry Potter fame) demonstrates that Nicki has a chameleon-like willingness to project herself as situations dictate. After being caught, she says she's learned a lesson and now aspires to charitable work. Her responses sound as if they might have been prepared for the question portion of a beauty contest.

The tone, energy, performances and voyeuristic tug of The Bling Ring prove considerable, but it's equally true that at the end of the movie's glitzy crime spree, I was left to wonder whether this true story -- reported in a Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales -- afforded Coppola sufficient opportunity to leave an audience with something more substantial.

Coppola (Marie Antoionette and Somewhere) is a skilled enough filmmaker to keep us engaged by The Bling Ring even as we fret that she may have demonstrated something some of us already suspected: Shallow people really are ... well ... shallow.

A star on the road to nowhere

Director Sophia Coppola books first-class on a journey that goes nowhere.

Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere opens to the sound of a well-tuned Ferrari engine. The sleek black car -- I'm guessing a price tag that tops $150,000 -- enters the frame, disappears and then re-emerges. It soon becomes clear that this expensive, carefully calibrated vehicle is circling a track. More significantly, the car’s impressive arsenal of capabilities seems at odds with any functional imperative: Car and driver are going nowhere.

You get the idea, I'm sure. Coppola’s excessively languid portrait of Johnny Marco, a movie star played by Stephen Dorff, is about to introduce us to a life that seems to have lost all sense of purpose.

As the picture unfolds, we learn that Johnny, the driver of the car in Coppola’s opening, has taken up temporary residence in the Chateau Marmont, a Los Angeles hotel where celebrities command apartment-sized living spaces while protecting their privacy.

Johnny takes advantage of this privacy in a variety of less-than-creative ways. Early on, he hires two blonde pole dancers to cavort for him. (They bring portable poles.) He wanders through the parties that seem to emerge effortlessly around him. In moments that feel acutely vacant, Johnny plants himself on the sofa, smokes cigarettes and swigs beer from a bottle, surrounded by whatever passes for his thoughts.

So what’s the point and should we care?

How you answer those questions goes a long way toward determining how you’ll react to Somewhere, which either can be viewed as an immersive portrait in the life of a movie star whose success has allowed him to lose touch with reality or as an enervating act of directorial indulgence in which interminable pacing masquerades as insight.

I fall somewhere between these two extremes.

If Somewhere remains watchable, it’s partly because Dorff makes Johnny semi-sympathetic. He’s capable of moments of genuine tenderness, and he has fun with his 11-year-old daughter, Elle Fanning’s Cleo. Thankfully, Johnny doesn’t lord it over people who work at the hotel. He’s not prone to rampant displays of ego -- or of anything else for that matter.

Johnny’s tendency to indulge his impulses (ordering every flavor of gelato in a posh Italian hotel during a publicity tour) sometimes puts him on a level playing field with Cleo, although – truth be told – Cleo often seems more mature than her father, not to mention more in touch with reality.

While driving Cleo to a figure skating lesson, a suspicious Johnny wonders whether an SUV might be following his car.

“There are kind of a lot of those in LA,” Cleo observes, reminding Johnny (and us) that she’s in touch with a reality that her father mostly manages to evade.

Coppola, who grew up around the movie business, presumably knows a thing or two about Hollywood. Johnny’s dutiful but detached attitude toward publicity seems credible, but Coppola extends Johnny’s sense of detachment to nearly everything. In the plush cocoon in which Johnny resides, life has turned into the equivalent of 24-hour room service. Ask, and it shall be delivered.

Perhaps to give us a sense of the way time seems to expand in such an insulated environment, Coppola holds shots for a very long time, far past the point where they have anything more to reveal. And she (purposefully, we presume) tells no story because story would be antithetical to a world in which luxury begins to feel like sensory deprivation.

At one point, Johnny attends a session where a couple of effects artists make a mold of his head. Quietly, he vanishes inside the hardening mask; it’s part of a process to make him look like a 90-year-old for his next role. It’s as if Johnny’s being buried alive, consumed by the demands of a profession he doesn’t seem to enjoy.

A movie about a pointless existence becomes meaningful to the extent that we identify. Johnny’s world of over-saturated luxury is not one that most of us have experienced, and when we step back, we may wonder why this star seems to have no passion for acting.

Is it the fault of a business that has no passion for anything but commerce? Is he just a jerk, as the anonymous text messages he occasionally receives claim? Is there nothing about fame that he enjoys?

I went a long way with Somewhere, hoping that Coppola, whose work (Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, and Marie Antoinette), I’ve mostly liked. I hoped that Coppola finally would reward my patience. But rather than feeling for Johnny, I began to experience the same sort of numbness that encases his life.

Despite an ending that may suggest otherwise, Johnny remains on the road to nowhere – as Coppola’s opening shot suggests. That’s a valid point, I suppose, but it infects the entire movie. Before Somewhere concludes, you may find yourself wondering why you’ve been given a first-class ticket on a journey with no real destination.