Sofia Coppola

From birth, Sofia was destined for the cinema. As her father buying her newborn son a jersey from her favorite team, Francis made her appear as a baby in The Godfather , in the mythical scene of her christening. Later, other works of his appeared, such as The Law of the Street , Cotton Club or Peggy Sue got married . In The Godfather III , she replaced Winona Ryder in the role of Mary Corleone, a decision by her father that did not go down well in the film world. Her performance received disproportionate negative criticism, and she ended up dynamiting her career as an actress: Sofia’s success was going to come from other paths.

In 1998 he ventured to direct Lick the Star , a black and white short that told the story of four girls who decide to poison the boys at their school with arsenic; a plan inspired by the gothic novel “Flowers in the attic”. Young, beautiful, lonely and boring girls and women. This prototype of a female character would be repeated in Sofia’s first feature film: The Virgin Suicides . Inspired by the novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides, tells the story of how the beautiful Lisbon sisters, the girls for whom the whole school yearns, commit suicide. The entire film is narrated through the adolescent gaze of a boy who, already in maturity, fails to understand the reason for such a tragic event. But there is no simple answer because Coppola’s film is more intelligent and suggestive than a simple equation. Sincere drama with touches of humor wrapped in a nostalgic and evocative atmosphere: the best way to start a career in the Seventh Art.

Sofia’s next work confirmed her promising debut and positioned her as one of the young figures to watch in the world of cinema. Lost in Translation was a resounding success: it received countless awards, including the Golden Globe for Best Picture and the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film is about two people immersed in failed marriages who have an affair in Tokyo. The whole film is wrapped in a nostalgic and melancholic air; everything is a strange world for protagonists who do not understand where their place is. The location is as fundamental as the dialogues, and the gestures, like the words. Both Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanssonthey embroider their roles and endow the characters with an attitude of presence-absence that is fundamental to the story.

Three years later, in 2006, he premiered Marie Antoinette , an unconventional period drama that, although it differed in form from its predecessors, did not do so in content. In the revolutionary 18th century, Marie Antoinette is forced to marry Louis XVI to seal an alliance between France and Austria. Thus, at only fourteen years old, this girl has to leave her home to settle in the opulent and sophisticated French court. Like the protagonist of Lost in Translation , the queen rebels against the isolation and monotony of life in Versailles and the attitude of her husband, thus becoming a misunderstood and criticized woman.

With Somewhere , we meet Sofia Coppola’s first male lead. Johnny Marco is a successful actor who sees his life of luxury and excess turned upside down when, by surprise, he is presented with his eleven-year-old daughter from a failed marriage. Under this premise, the director develops themes that are linked to her previous work: the identity crisis, the search for her own place, the banality of appearances. In this last aspect she delves into her latest work, The Bling Ring , a portrait of the silliness that underlies the fan phenomenon.

Loneliness, misunderstanding, the monotony of existence, empty appearances… in short, the melancholy of life. Through different stories and characters, Sofia Coppola has delved into the same themes. In one way or another, every story that comes from her hands is inevitably personal, both in form and content. Fiction and reality are mixed in her tapes and endow them with enormous sincerity and subtlety: herein lies the greatness of her cinema.