LIFE-CRISIS: SOFIA COPPOLA's SOMEWHERE (2011)

Somewhere centres on the character of Johnny Marco (played by the erstwhile popular actor Stephen Dorff), a film star who features in generic Hollywood fare. Despite his evident success, he is in crisis over the direction of his life and the choices he has made. He lives in the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, where he leads a profligate and unsatisfying life. He tries to stave off the essential loneliness and emptiness of his daily existence through his dependency on fast cars (he drives a Ferrari), alcohol and cigarettes, prescription medication and multiple sexual encounters. His crisis is thrown into relief when his young daughter Cleo comes to stay with him for a few weeks. Naturally, when Cleo comes into his life he is forced to reassess the choices he has made since her presence impedes the more excessive elements of his lifestyle. As we shall see is the case also in Broken Flowers, Somewhere deals with a male character who finds himself at the threshold of accepting adult responsibility somewhat late in life. Both Don Johnston, the main character in Broken Flowers, and Johnny Marco have undergone a very protracted adolescence and face a life-crisis precipitated by the realisation that they are growing older. The assumption that possibility should not be curtailed and that, therefore, choice and commitment must be delayed has eventually led them to a depleted life of repetition. In the same way as Don Johnston is forced to become the man who affirms choice, Johnny Marco needs to decide to go ‘somewhere’: he seeks a line of flight out of his stultified world that is held together by clichés and reiteration. Johnny, then, is a man on the cusp of admitting to himself that his life has become as formulaic and predictable as the movies in which he stars and that he must change something in order to go forward. It is this course to the moment of choosing to choose that the film maps out.