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With all the hoopla surrounding the Lost in Translation, I decided to bring home Sofia Coppola's earlier directing effort.Partly because I felt a certain indebtedness to her - I thought her publicly trumpeted acting fiasco in her father's film was not too justified - for some reason she struck the right chord with me.
So I was completely predisposed to like her film. I remain sceptical regarding her choice of Murray for the lead role - I saw a few clips, and his "acting" there immediately reminded me why I hated him so much.
But be it as it may (and we all have seen what a good director could do with a bad actor... OK, OK, so Kubrick couldn't with Tom...), I wanted her to be a good director.
Maybe I expected another Liv Ullmann... who knows.
I made myself absorbed in the film from the getgo, and I kept swimming in it till the final notes of the reasonably good soundtrack faded away. And I enjoyed many moments of it.
Yet that fascination proved to be very short lived. It soon began to unravel, and I started seeing its weaknesses - too many, as it turned out.
Don't take me wrong - in the sea of garbage and prospering mediocrity that Hollywood gives us each year that film should rightly stand out. It shows enough good taste in many places that would carry it through. But it also has some of that "made for TV" flavor that I always find extremely objectionable in films.
Sofia made a film about good people for good people - but she coated it with too much sugar, so it quickly became too overweight to float.
The true merit of any good director is in knowing where to stop, and she failed there - she just kept adding things to the cake, and it became simply overpowering for its own good. Where Bergman would put just a subtle hint, Sofia had to give us the whole page, and that page, being about simple things we all already know, quickly became boring.
My wife disliked it from the first minutes, and she completely dismissed it after it was finished - I doubt she would give it any additional thoughts.
I didn't feel that way. I still believe Sofia has potential. A bit too late a bloomer - truly great directors show their "teeth" at much earlier age usually, but I still wish her best of luck. With so many directors doing what they are doing to trash our screens, she is indeed a small treasure.
So this film was overrated... whether or not the Lost in Translation is too I shall find in a couple of years, most likely.
Follow Ups:
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Don't know if you are ust teasing me, but if not, I think I already covered this in my answers below.That movie is kinda behind me already and my mind is elsewhere... too many good ones still unwatched!
I should rent it one day soon.Chris
How is it sugar coated? I don't really think of it as a film "about good people for good people" at all. I think the tone of the film was meant to achieve a rather simple aim, namely conveying the dreaminess and melancholy that hang around *those* girls in high school, in adolescence...the unattainable otherworldliness of pretty young girls when you're an awkward young boy. More broadly, I thought it was largely 'about' the feeling of adolescence in general, the sense of momentousness that accompanies everything, the strange distance between people who are filled with emotions but incapable of expressing them, and the tragedy of parents (understandably) attempting to thwart the inevitable maturation of their children.Flaubert has some line about Madame Bovary being his attempt to convey a certain shade of yellow. I thought Virgin Suicides was just as much about colors and tones as it was about the story, these serving to lend exactly the right sense of softhued strangeness to things.
I guess I can see what you mean about a certain 'made for TV' flavor, but I don't think of this as a cautionary tale or melodrama at all. Allegory, maybe, but not melodrama. More a distillation of the mood of adolescence, which has the romance of suicide and the poignancy of sexual confusion and distance at its apogee.
And she was 28 when she directed Virgin Suicides. It's hard for anyone, even a Coppola, to get a feature film made at that early an age these days. The time of youthful heroism and unbridled experimentalism is over. If you get a movie made or a book published or a painting shown in a museum before you're 30, you're one of the very, very lucky ones. Trust me.
tho the horror was greatly downplayed, there were no soaring violins or orchestral background to establish moods, and the film is all the better for that. The teenagers were played as immature, awkward, sappy and melodramatic, which is how a great many kids of that generation would have been
It would have been quite a challenge to recreate all that fragile angst credibly, the scene where the kids are playing records back and forth over the phone and they play Todd Rundgrens Hello Its Me was when I realised she had a firm focus on her subject
My 17 year old daughter watched this film and thought the girls were pretty but so starry eyed naive and sappy she didnt believe in the characterisations and had little emotional connection with the story, about the same reaction she would have if she was beamed back in the time machine to spend a week at that school in 197X I am sure!
The 30 years from that generation to hers is a mighty gulf to cross indeed and I think Ms Coppolla could have done far worse with that film, I thought it was a gem
Eric
I already wished Sofia best of luck, but you are dead wrong about that before 30 thing. Kubrick made his Killer's Kiss at 27, Tarovsky his The Steamroller and the Violin at 28 - and both were far more mature films.However, I didn't hold her age against her - just noted that fact.
Killer's Kiss came out in 1955, Tarkovsky's film came out in 1960.Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto when he was 24. Joyce finished Dubliners by 25. Et cetera. The 20th century is a bygone era. It ain't that easy to be brilliant today, post-Kubrick, post-Tarkovsky, post-Breton, post-Joyce, and so on. Being a 'young artist' today means being under 40. To get anything made today you have to be rich and/or exceedingly well-connected. And even then it's difficult. You have the occasional 25 year old whiz kid, but the fact of their being 25 is used as a marketting angle, and they get to leap frog to the front, perhaps before they're ready.
It's after the end of the avant gardes, it's after the end of an adventurous Hollywood. Kubrick and Tarkovsky were operating in a different world, a world notably free of the influence of, say, Kubrick and Tarkovsky. It's a damn sight harder to do anything noteworthy today, and it's exceedingly difficult to do so as a 'young' artist.
But, again...could you say what it was about the film that you found sugar coated, or specifically lacking? What did your wife think was expecially weak?
First, I strongly disagree with your characterization of the last century as something unique and of the last frontier nature. Artists have always faced exactly the same "acceptance" challenges throught the history. The 17th century Dutch masters had to jump through the same hoops as someone making his first film today.Besides, you seem to be giving that aspect far more attention than I did - I only mentioned it passingly, no heavy point there.
Regarding the sugar coating... I definitely see that as the modern-time American tradition, and it always bothers me.
When I first came here I was truly revolted by the typical American girl's room interiors - you know what I mean, those pastel colored furniture sets with painted flowers, etc. The idea was to treat the girls like they were dolls, not humans. There is definite sense of infantilism in that treatment, and it was unfortunately present in the movie.
The girls themselves were perhaps the best part of the film - I liked them all. But their surrounding could have used the more, shall we say, down to Earth treatment. I understand about the shades of yellow, but here it was more the shades of the timeless kindergarten. And not just about the girls. The whole movie spoke "I am just a little cute girl".
I asked my wife today what she disliked, and she had to force her momory, as to her that was an immediately forgettable experience - and she has an accute sense of art.
She particularly disliked the rather shallow characters - pretty much all of them, but especially the parents. She could not for the life of her see the reason for the four girls' suicide... and neigher could I - we both felt that was simply done for the sake of the plot, and came completely out of blue. The first one... well, rather forced too, but OK as the opening shot.
She didn't like the music - but she is such an unforgiving person in that respect - I usually cut some slack, and in that case the music was I thought inoffensive for the type of music used. Surely I would much rather see them use Verdi...
Her largest criticism was along the lines of age and experience. She said, when a new artist appears with his first work, it better be something original. Let it be rought, but not just another common one. This film is the opposite - it is the rather common work overall, but with an attempt at making it more polished, more fit for human consumption.
It isn't just a matter of acceptance that makes it hard to be a fledgling artist of whatever sort today, and it isn't just a matter of having to work to get inside the system...it's much more a matter of there being little new to be done, little that anyone can do that can't be smacked down as being '______ian', as being too overdetermined by influences one might not even know one has. The only option alot of people see is to go straight for shock value, but even that's run its course. This is something I've posted about before, with regards to Dylan. Before there was a Bob Dylan, or a Beatles, it was alot easier for there to be a Dylan or a Beatles. Afterwards, it's hard to either avoid their influence or build on it without being derivative.I don't think I can disagree with your assessment of the movie, so long as it's considered as having some kind of realist bent. I thought it was much more impressionistic, again, more about evoking a mood than getting across a message. As for the specific issue of why they committed suicide, well, on the one hand I'd say they had an overbearing mother and were dramatic teenagers incapable of understanding the terminal consequences, and on the other I think that's kind of the point of the film, to build it around this mysterious, apparently quite arbitrary act. The boys who were the girls' fans were puzzled as well. Bottom line, they were young, and they died young, before all of the momentousness and romance and dreaminess of adolescence could sour. So, again, I think the overall thrust of the film is to evoke that strange sadness that accompanies adolescence and its end.
Of course, you're right about sugar coating being the de rigeur mode of Americana, and in real life there is nothing endearing about the dollhouse aesthetic of modern girls' bedrooms. But, hey, it looks great on film.
I saw it one years ago..I remember whaat I thought at the time : She is learning her job like an apprentice...There is some hope..letīs see.
There was one of her recent films on the shelf... but I hesitated. If my wife saw the box cover she would think I was beginning to have my mid-life crisis.I haven't seen her work since Malena, so I guess I should take my chance with domestic tranquility - don't you agree?
She is definitely one of the most beautiful acresses to grace the screen today. From Malena and Under Suspision it was hard to draw any conclusion regarding her acting - it was like trying to read holding your sheet against the sun... if you know what I mean.
Sofia does need to learn, but she is already 32.
Let me see...hum..I feel..something..how should I say..positive..
Still have not?
She is beautiful, of course, Malena I did absolutely not like ( i was the only guy who didnīt..)
Acting, I think nice..But where is Igrid Bergmann....
32...thatīs just a baby..some start late..I see promess at the horizon..How is her new flim?
Malena the film was just another one of the many films of that type, and although not too bad, it didn't break any new grounds. It made passing grade, I would say. It came close to just being the Monica's vehicle.For once, I am glad Monica is not Ingrid - in that case I had to always struggle, as I expect my leading lady to posess at least some beauty. OK, OK, maybe not the Audrey type (Ah.... the Roman Holidays!!!!), but someone I could imagine myself falling for.
So I shall make the brave move in a couple of days - I AM bringing home that Monica's film.
Well Ingrid had a beautiful face in Casablanca..later she become more than a matron. But she was a good actress.
Malena was a too see through movie..a vehicle as you said. I found it boring.
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