Somewhere is about the life in LA of a successful actor. We see snapshots of his life and in the course of the film the mother of his daughter telephones him asking him to look after his daughter while the mother is away for an indeterminate time. We see that the actor, Johnny Marco, is an easy-going charming guy who lives in an hotel (the well-known Chateau Marmont). At the beginning of the film, over the credits we see a black sports car driving in circles around a circuit. After the credits, Johnny falls down stairs and breaks his wrist, and his wrist-in-plaster is a recurrent element in the rest of the film. Then we see Johnny lying on his bed being entertained by a pair of pole dancers. Then he gives a press conference. He goes to Italy with his daughter and they stay in a luxurious hotel with their own en-suite swimming pool, fawned upon by immaculately-dressed Italians, and he is interviewed for the radio. We see that Johnny is pretty inarticulate, which is fortunate, because he doesn't seem to have many thoughts or ideas anyway. He doesn't know much about his daughter, Cleo, but does his best in an easy-going way to look after her. She prepares food, phoning down to the hotel reception for the ingredients. In fact, as Johnny doesn't seem to have a home, the most stressful thing he does is phoning reception. We see the pole dancers a second time and we see how they break down and fold up their poles and put them away in a special bag when they are dismissed (Johnny fell asleep).
At every turn women throw themselves at him. There is a scene in which he walks into his hotel room ahead of Cleo and there, on his bed, is a woman showing him her breasts. He says to her "Now isn't a good time." and turns to his daughter behind him and says "Shall we go down stairs for a burger?"
Johnny's car, a black and noisy sports car, figures quite prominently, as there are several scenes in it, and once he gets a puncture and phones for help. He often suspects that he is being followed. I don't know why.
The film got off to a fairly bad start for me with the driving of the sports car in circles and then the pole dancers. There is a scene in which Cleo shows her father how she can ice-skate. This scene was held too long, as were the pole dancing scenes, as though the film-maker thought I might be interested in watching pole dancers and ice-skating. These scenes were shown from Johnny's point of view, implicating me in them, when I would have preferred some contextualising device. As I watched the film I wondered whether it was intended as a parody or send-up of life among the stars in LA, but it is more a pretty meticulous miniaturist observation without seeking drama or judgment. At the end of the film Johnny drives off into the desert and wanders along the road looking lost and confused, reminding me that I must press on with that article: 'The Role And Meaning Of The California Desert in The American Imagination.'
Is Coppola saying I grew up among Hollywood royalty and I know how it is, so I can make this film; because I KNOW? If a film were made set in the corridors of Buckingham Palace that told us definitively, once and for all, whether Prince Charles does or does not put his own toothpaste onto his toothbrush; how interesting would that film be? A bit, I suppose, in a gossipy way. This is the Hollywood equivalent of that film. Now we know that when the tide of angst and boredom wells out of the TV screen and across the hotel bed the Hollywood star phones reception and orders a brace of pole-dancers. I can cope better with toothpaste. It is more interesting to look at.
This is a fairly well-made film that doesn't say much about a fairly uninteresting subject.
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