To some degree, it’s become too easy to criticize Sofia Coppola. She’s the daughter of Hollywood royalty, she makes movies about an extremely narrow and generally well-to-do portion of society, and over the course of her career, she’s rubbed shoulders with some of the coolest people you’ve ever heard of. While we are in no way endorsing or even saying that we understand some people’s distaste for Coppola or her films – more on that in a moment – we are attempting to acknowledge the reasons why these folks might have felt comfortable to a fault when unfairly dismissing her work in years past.
What Coppola’s detractors often fail to mention is what a stylish and intuitively empathic storyteller she can be. In her best films (“Somewhere,” “The Virgin Suicides,” “The Beguiled”), Coppola mines a surfeit of humanity from hermetic social ecosystems, revealing layers of feeling in these worlds that we may not have known existed. Her critics certainly don’t talk about what a good director of actors she is, or how funny her movies can be. If they mention her fine taste, a throughline that runs through all her films, good, bad, or great, it’s sometimes done with more than a slight hint of derision.
READ MORE: Crossing The Frame In Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost In Translation’
Look, what we’re trying to say is that Sofia Coppola, in spite of the privilege she’s undeniably enjoyed as a member of one of Hollywood’s most prestigious families, has had to work hard to overcome her own hurdles. In doing this, she’s become one of the more singular filmmakers working today, having crafted a body of work that is both original and also utterly authentic to her lived experience.
As any reader of this site undoubtedly knows, Sofia is the youngest child and daughter of a director you may or may not have heard of named Francis Ford Coppola. Her aunt is Talia Shire, meaning her cousins are Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman. Her brother is Roman Coppola, an inventive and unusual director in his own right who, in the last few years, has enjoyed a great deal of success co-writing with Coppola family friend, Wes Anderson. To say her life is not like yours or mine isn’t merely an opinion so much as a statement of fact.
In film after film, Coppola has displayed a remarkable talent for portraying a world that most of us will never gain access to with an abundance of sensitivity that other, less patient, perhaps more male directors might not possess. Forget emerging from the shadow cast by her father, which she did some time ago – with seven films under her belt, Sofia Coppola has emerged as one of the most aesthetically distinctive directors of the new decade, to the degree that some of her early movies (we see you, “Lost in Translation” and “Virgin Suicides”) have inspired Tumblr crazes years after their release.
READ MORE: ‘The Bling Ring’ Is Sofia Coppola’s Ode To Entitlement & White Privilege
In honor of the upcoming release of Coppola’s latest, the excellent “On The Rocks,” we’ve thrown together a list of Sofia Coppola’s essential directorial work. Coppola-philes looking to dig into this director’s back catalogs before watching her new film will have plenty of catching up to do!
“The Virgin Suicides” (1999)
“You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets,” says a doctor to a thirteen-year-old girl in Sofia Coppola’s haunting directorial debut, “The Virgin Suicides.” The girl’s reply: “Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” This deceptively simple exchange ends up saying quite a bit about the pangs of anxiety experienced by nearly all of the characters in Coppola’s filmography. Coppola is an expert at immersing audiences in the pain and trepidation of young womanhood, and there is arguably no better example of that aforementioned narrative preoccupation than the director’s alternately dreamy and menacing adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 coming-of-age novel. “The Virgin Suicides” is a rumination, told in retrospect by a group of boys recalling a bout of summertime longing for a group of beautiful and unknowable neighborhood girls, the Lisbon sisters, who lived in the eerily well-manicured suburbs of 1970’s Michigan. Right out the gate, Coppola’s style was more or less fully formed, which went a ways towards silencing those who were all-too-ready to preemptively criticize her for being the daughter of one of cinema’s most revered directors. Edward Lachman’s alluring cinematography lends every scene in “The Virgin Suicides” the feeling of a hazy, half-lucid memory, and the use of music throughout, from the narcotic pop drone of Air’s original score to the immortal Heart needle-drop that introduces Josh Hartnett’s elusive heartthrob Trip Fontaine, is aces, foreshadowing the impeccable soundtracks Coppola would go on to curate later in her filmography. As a snapshot of lost innocence, “The Virgin Suicides” leaves bruises, and it remains one of the great late-90’s debuts.
“Lost In Translation” (2003)
It’s somewhat difficult to assess “Lost in Translation” seventeen years after its release because, for anyone who was going to the movies when Sofia Coppola’s second film came out, it felt like one of those landmarks where the hype was so loud and the praise was so effusive, that any middle-of-the-road reaction to it would simply fail to register. Many regard “Lost in Translation” as Coppola’s masterwork, and without a doubt, there’s ample evidence to support that claim. It might be her most purely beautiful movie, with cinematographer Lance Acord turning nocturnal Tokyo into a bewitching, neon-lit dreamscape that is almost alien in its splendor. It’s also a film whose soundtrack, an impressive collection of indie deep-cuts from Squarepusher, Peaches, and The Jesus and Mary Chain, whose classic shoegaze anthem “Just Like Honey” is crucial to the much-discussed final scene, launched a thousand college rock obsessions. As the story of a sardonic, over-the-hill American actor, Bob Harris (Bill Murray), and a disaffected expatriate, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), dulling their shared loneliness with whiskey and karaoke in a foreign metropolis as their personal relationships languish elsewhere, “Lost in Translation” is touching, and occasionally even transcendent. However, some of the movie’s culture-shock humor – primarily Bob’s persistent befuddlement at both his Japanese surroundings and the denizens of Tokyo itself – haven’t exactly aged well. There’s also the matter of the film’s supporting characters, a self-absorbed photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) and a vapid Hollywood actress (Anna Faris), whom some have speculated are thinly-veiled stand-ins for Coppola’s ex-husband Spike Jonze, and his “Being John Malkovich” star, Cameron Diaz. Gossip aside, “Lost in Translation” remains a glittering jewel of the 2000’s independent renaissance and a fine primer for anyone who is thinking about taking the deep-dive into Coppola’s body of work.
“Marie Antoinette” (2006)
What do you do after you make a movie like “Lost in Translation,” a movie that sets the cinemagoing world on fire? The answer is, make anything you want: that’s what they call cashing a blank check, baby. That is seemingly what Coppola did with her candy-colored, massively ambitious, occasionally unwieldy historical bauble, “Marie Antoinette.” Anyone expecting a sanitized or tediously literal recounting of the former dauphine/last Queen of France’s extraordinary life must have been appalled by Coppola’s audacious bubblegum re-imagining, which was pink, frilly, completely uninterested in being evaluated as a work of serious drama, and ultimately, as airy as a cream puff. With “Marie Antoinette,” Coppola was giving free rein to her inner child, and the result is a dizzying and exhausting two-hour historical epic that occasionally feels like the feverish, sugar-enhanced dreams of a little girl with enormous imagination and an obsession with interior designing as it applies to lavish French castles. “Marie Antoinette” is a fascinating example of Baz Luhrmann-style revisionism, but as a work of cinema, it could have used some room to breathe. It’s an occasionally airless movie, in spite of a rather stunning sense of tonal confidence, plus Jason Schwartzman’s fascinatingly low-key turn as King Louis XVI, and eye-catching cinematography from Coppola’s visual muse, Harris Savides. The result is a star-studded, expensive-looking indulgence one that features Steve Coogan, Judy Davis, Rose Byrne, Rip Torn, Jamie Dornan, Asia Argento, and even Tom Hardy, of all people, in its cast. Mostly, though, it’s a film for the Coppola die-hards.
“Somewhere” (2010)
It’s very easy to look at “Somewhere” as Sofia Coppola’s most unwound movie. By almost any conceivable metric, this could be said to be true. This languorous and achingly bittersweet character study, about a handsome, over-the-hill male celebrity living in self-imposed exile at the notorious Chateau Marmont hotel on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip, mostly moves at a snail’s pace, with Coppola and regular D.P. Harris Savides opting for a kind of obdurate art-movie storytelling style once favored by the likes of Chantal Akerman and Andy Warhol. What the criticisms of “Somewhere” often neglect to mention are that the film is, without question, the most moving and personal film that Coppola has ever made, and not just because it’s the story of a wide-eyed eleven-year-old girl and her larger-than-life, famous father. Coppola is someone who understands the artificially-crafted allure of exclusive, upper-echelon environments, and she also happens to possess a hypnotic eye for the routine rhythms of press junkets, after-hours bacchanals, and behind-the-scenes time-wasting among the 1%. “Somewhere” is downright poetic as an audio-visual experience, and it feels like a movie that Coppola poured every fiber of her being into, although she’s ably assisted by the incredible Stephen Dorff, who’s never been more emotionally naked as he is here, playing a pitiable yet affable blank shell of a man, and also Elle Fanning, as pure as the loving daughter of Dorff’s character as she was lascivious in “The Beguiled.” “Somewhere” is a glacial, uncompromising, misunderstood masterpiece: a film that’s admirably unwilling to meet its audience halfway, but one whose lingering sense of melancholic regret makes it well worth the extra effort.
“The Bling Ring” (2013)
In theory, “The Bling Ring” should be one of Sofia Coppola’s best movies. It’s a tart, serrated sort-of satire about aimless, super-spoiled kids whose lives are so bereft of meaning that they start breaking into the mansions of the rich and famous and making off like bandits in the night with millions of dollars’ worth of designer goods. “The Bling Ring,” which is based on one of those true stories that are just a smidge too insane to be made up, was an opportunity for Coppola to take a scalpel to the cloistered, uber-wealthy ecosystems that she had chosen to set her movies in up until that point, and see if there was any blood left to draw. “The Bling Ring,” which is never anything less than watchable, is ultimately neither mean nor witty enough to really work as a satire, although the movie does occasionally hit its targets, broad though they may be. Coppola seems like a lovely person in real life, and certainly a director that harbors sympathy for her characters, but these cretinous, entitled brats aren’t really deserving of anyone’s sympathy. Like every Sofia Coppola film, “The Bling Ring” is a gorgeous style object, featuring typically soft-hued and seductive cinematography from the great Christopher Blauvelt (who took over the project after Coppola regular Harris Savides passed away at 55 before completing his work on the film), original music co-composed by “Uncut Gems” mastermind Daniel Lopatin, and clever use of 2000s pop cuts from the likes of M.I.A., Frank Ocean, and Kanye West (the “All of the Lights” needle drop is incredible). What all this modish, tastemaker-approved posturing really adds up to is still up for debate.
“A Very Murray Christmas” (2015)
It’s an irresistible hook on paper: recruit Bill Murray, everybody’s favorite aging scoundrel, and comedy icon, for a star-studded Christmas romp in which he basically carouses around New York with his big-name pals, occasionally stopping to sing a song, marvel at a beautiful sight, or partake in some of his signature, poker-faced comic drollery. The sheer amount of star wattage in “A Very Murray Christmas,” Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray’s Netflix holiday special that effectively functioned as an endearing featherweight “Lost in Translation” reunion, can make the resulting proceedings feel like this director’s version of one of Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups” movie. Everybody’s in this thing: George Clooney, Jenny Lewis, Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Miley Cyrus, and Phoenix (the peppy, dancefloor-friendly rock group fronted by Coppola’s husband, Thomas Mars), dressing up as chefs and lending their trademark power-pop sound a pleasurable holiday sheen. The plot of “A Very Murray Christmas” is threadbare enough that it essentially exists as an excuse for us to hang out with Murray and company, which is all anyone really wants to see anyway (what’s the story, well, it’s something about a snowstorm that effectively cancels the star’s Yuletide plans, yada yada… really, we assure you, the plot matters not here). Murray’s Christmas celebration is appealing and knowingly frothy, as any work that features Maya Rudolph as a blowsy lounge singer and Chris Rock and Murray doing a duet of “Do You Hear What I Hear” is bound to be. You wouldn’t exactly call it substantial, but for those who grew up with this kind of rosy holiday programming, it will no doubt hit trigger the desired hit of nostalgia.
“The Beguiled” (2017)
Let’s be honest, it would have been weird if people didn’t raise their eyebrows at the prospect of Sofia Coppola making a film set in the Civil War-era South. After all, Coppola is a white filmmaker, one whose films consistently explore privileged, affluent micro-worlds that are… well, populated almost exclusively by white people. As it turns out, we needn’t have worried. “The Beguiled,” Coppola’s kooky, glorious reimagining of Don Siegel’s Clint Eastwood-starring Southern Gothic, is far from a traditional costume drama. In fact, this is a movie that couldn’t be less interested in being “respectable,” which is intriguing when you consider that it’s one of this director’s strongest works. Instead, “The Beguiled” is a prickly and savage black comedy about a house full of resilient women, and the leering, exceedingly horny wounded soldier who is unfortunate enough to end up at their doorstep, in dire need of their assistance. “The Beguiled,” blessedly, is one of the more tonally liberated movies in Coppola’s filmography, pivoting from rhapsodic, “Picnic at Hanging Rock”-style Victorian opulence to queasy black comedy to unbelievably gruesome body horror at the drop of a dime, somehow, without ever losing its balance. “The Beguiled” is a beautiful riot, a bad-taste exercise executed with the best taste, and it never quite goes where you think it will; oftentimes, it almost feels as if Coppola is actively trying to fight against the tired accusations that she’s basically been making the same movie since “The Virgin Suicides.” It doesn’t hurt that this 2017 period ripper is one of Coppola’s best-acted pictures, featuring Nicole Kidman at her most ferocious, Colin Farrell at his sweatiest and most pathetic, and Kirsten Dunst baring her soul in one of her great late-career performances.
“On The Rocks” (2020)
Coppola and Murray get the band back together again in “On The Rocks,” a warm, wistful, and winning arthouse buddy movie about an aging playboy who has to remember how to be a dad, and his grown-up daughter who is wrestling with the prospect of her husband’s possible infidelity. Coppola’s filmography is filled with exuberant-yet-world-weary patriarchs and suggestions of sexual duplicity, but the appeal of something like “On The Rocks” really comes down to seeing two charming movie stars (Murray’s daughter is played by a radiant Rashida Jones) sipping Martinis in a procession of glamorous, old-school restaurants across the greater Manhattan area. If nothing else, the film offers a soothingly uncomplicated vision of pre-COVID life: one that may understandably make some viewers nostalgic for a night out on the town, even if this particular writer/director’s focus on #RichPeopleProblems remains, for better or worse, intact. “On The Rocks” is a cinematic confection, and confections, as we all know, are often unfairly labeled as inconsequential. And yet, truly memorable movie confections are hard to pull off, as the likes of Ernst Lubitsch and Wes Anderson would no doubt tell us. “On The Rocks” may not be Coppola’s most memorable movie, but it’s not intended to be: it’s a wonderful jape, a pleasant, low-stakes caper, a screwball soufflé with echoes of “Roman Holiday” and other golden-age delights. The film loses just a little bit of steam in its overly busy final act, in which Coppola makes time for a picaresque, not-unenjoyable jaunt to a Mexican resort and allows her fundamentally good-natured characters to reconcile their differences a bit too easily. Still, nobody is coming to “On The Rocks” for a probing work of character-focused drama. They’re coming to see Bill Murray and Rashida Jones tear across nighttime New York City in an immaculate red convertible, snacking on caviar and cutting it up like a pair of regular goofballs. When you look at the film through that lens, it’s hard not to want to be along for the ride.
Odds and Ends:
Coppola’s unofficial debut is the evocatively-titled “Lick The Star,” a fourteen-minute short that feels like a test run for many of the themes that would be explored in more depth in “The Virgin Suicides.” It’s the story of a quartet of girls who plan on poisoning a group of boys with arsenic, and yet the film’s barbed setup is intriguingly at odds with the delicate, understated directorial touch that Coppola brings to the material. Sofia’s first short film is also noteworthy for featuring a cameo from her father’s old pal Peter Bogdonavich, plus fetching black and white camerawork from her “Lost in Translation” collaborator Lance Acord (“Lick The Star” is available as an extra on the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray release of “Virgin Suicides”).
For a long time, Coppola caught a lot of flack for her acting in her father’s movies, although it seems rather unfair to hold that supposed series of slights against her since she was just a kid in the first two “Godfather” films. Coppola has small parts in some of her father’s weird, punk-y ’80s films, such as “The Outsiders,” “Rumble Fish,” and “The Cotton Club,” and there’s certainly been no shortage of conversation, over the years, about her turn in “The Godfather Part III.”
Coppola also has acting credits in “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” (we’re not kidding), and makes a cheeky appearance in her brother Roman’s madcap retro sci-fi homage, “CQ.” Being the wife of a famous rock musician, it’s also not that shocking that Coppola has directed some pretty great music videos for the likes of Air, The White Stripes, The Flaming Lips, Kevin Shields, and, of course, Phoenix.
As far as non-film-related endeavors, Coppola directed a Rome-based adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” for Teatro dell’Opera in 2017 (in collaboration with Valentino), and she’s also been behind adverts for the likes of Dior, H&M, and Marc Jacobs. Unsurprisingly, Coppola has been a fixture in the style world for some time: she interned at Chanel when she was young, and even designed an elegant handbag for Louis Vuitton in 2008.
No word yet on what Coppola’s next project will be, but her “On The Rocks” is currently in select theaters via A24 and will be released digitally via Apple TV+ on October 23.