Venice Film Festival Reactions to Somewhere

Sofia Coppola's much anticipated new movie, Somewhere, had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival last weekend, and the response to the movie has been overwhelmingly positive. Below are a few notable reviewers' reactions to the film.

Many have made comparisons to Lost in Translation, the Oscar-winning film Coppola made for Focus Features in 2002, not least Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek, who glowingly responded to the director's latest vision:

Somewhere …is nothing but alive, to the point that just hours after watching it, I’m longing to see it again. … The whole of Somewhere is about that something shaking loose. And as I think about Somewhere now, I wonder: How can that even be a subject for a movie? Is there really enough there to fill a short, let alone a feature? But that’s Coppola’s gift, the ability to build a movie around nothing more than a whisper (even, in the case of Lost in Translation, a literal whisper). Coppola may have the most delicate touch of any filmmaker currently working, and she has the most oblique sense of humor, too.

Writing at her Thompson on Hollywood blog, industry maven Anne Thompson praise the delicate, artistic qualities of Coppola's film:

Languidly paced with many long static shots, Somewhere is a precisely-observed, often silent portrait of a depressed movie star… Witty, spare and gorgeously framed, Somewhere should play well for the young smart-house set.

Over at the website of Empire magazine, Damon Wise says that "Somewhere, the lovely new film from Sofia Coppola" is "very much of a piece with her signature film, Lost In Translation," and continues:

Somewhere is a rich and sophisticated film that draws its world so deftly it's easy to forget it isn't ours. … [Stephen] Dorff is effortless as the dozy lothario, and [Elle] Fanning gives a refreshingly reined-in child performance as the daughter who, in some ways, is older than her father. But nobody will overlook its director. This is definitely Coppola's film, a familiar but still studied and affecting piece that functions nicely as a character study but ever better as a piece of art.

Geoffrey Macnab at The Independent praises the serene quality of this complex character piece, and again sees echoes of Lost in Translation:

Coppola's achievement is to have made an affecting and quietly funny film about such an unsympathetic character. Somehow, she makes us care about the existential angst of a pampered celebrity living a deeply superficial life. After the formal extravagance of her period picture, Marie Antoinette, this is Coppola back in Lost In Translation mode. The storytelling is very understated. Shots – whether lap dances or games of Wii tennis – are often held for a small eternity.

Somewhere will be released by Focus Features om December 22.