On the Rocks

On the Rocks is Sofia Coppola’s seventh feature. There is a consistency to what initially look like disparate stories: they tend to be about women alienated from their environments and from themselves. (Somewhere might be an exception, though the character played by Stephen Dorff is tested through his relationships with females, particularly his young daughter.) Coppola’s female rites of passage and/or transitions have wildly different outcomes: suicide in the Virgin Suicides, murder in The Beguiled, execution in Marie Antoinette, and imprisonment in The Bling Ring. Lost in Translation, possibly her best film so far, is not nearly as melodramatic as the others. Scarlett Johansson’s Charlotte, a young college graduate, meets Bob, an aging actor played by Bill Murray, in Tokyo. Across generations, they connect at an uncertain time in both their lives. It’s a love story without sex. Murray brings grace and delicacy to this role; it is one of his best performances.
In her latest film, Coppola again casts Murray, this time as Felix, a successful art dealer, the father of and adviser to Laura (Rashida Jones), a harried housewife who bustles around the city with her two small children. She is happily married to Dean (Marlon Wayans),   Continue Reading . . .