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"   Photo: American Zoetrope  Sofia Coppola said she was &amp;quot;totally surprised&amp;quot; when her new film, Somewhere, unanimously won the Golden Lion, the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival\u2014Coppola&amp;#039;s the first American woman to win the award, which usually precedes Oscar nominations. But it was hardly shocking, since Somewhere (which opens in limited release this Wednesday, December 22) probes the difficulties of modern relationships even more brilliantly than Lost in Translation, for which Coppola won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2003. We spoke with Coppola at The Standard; the 39-year-old filmmaker was dressed in a grey C\u00E9line sweater and black pants by her longtime friend, Marc Jacobs, with whom she collaborated on a collection of shoes and handbags for Louis Vuitton. Coppola&amp;#039;s love of fashion (she interned at age 15 at Chanel and designed the Japanese line, Milk Fed, after graduating from CalArts) is evident in Somewhere. A luminous Elle Fanning, who plays Cleo, wears a Prada dress that Coppola &amp;quot;bought for myself when I was in Italy a long time ago but never wore. I thought it was perfect for that scene.&amp;quot; Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a Hollywood bad boy living at the infamously decadent Chateau Marmont, where actor John Belushi and fashion photographer Helmut Newton both died, like the L.A. equivalent of N.Y.&amp;#039;s Hotel Chelsea. Loosely based on &amp;quot;a dozen or so guys&amp;quot; including &amp;quot;a little bit of&amp;quot; Colin Farrell, who lived pre-rehab at Chateau Marmont, Marco&amp;#039;s life is a blur of drug-fueled parties, hook-ups with random supermodels, press conferences with fawning assistants and aimlessly driving his Ferrari. He admits to an aspiring actor that he never studied acting and has no method. His hollow success is based on looks and charm. But his nonexistent relationship with his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo, crystallizes when Marco watches her ice skating performance; he doesn&amp;#039;t even know that she&amp;#039;s been skating for three years. His awkwardness contrasts with Cleo&amp;#039;s ease with Marco&amp;#039;s buddy, played by Chris Pontius of Jackass (who improvised his funny scenes with Fanning). Slowly\u2014playing Guitar Hero, tasting gelato, lounging poolside\u2014 in the tiny but significant moments which Coppola mastered in her previous films, father and daughter connect.   Photo: Sofia Coppola  About her zen minimalist approach, Coppola said &amp;quot;I like it so much in life when people aren&amp;#039;t able to express things; I like what&amp;#039;s not said, so it&amp;#039;s important that scenes remain the kind of sparse way they are written and not try to over-explain things.&amp;quot; Coppola said her films are about &amp;quot;looking at what kind of person you want to be; your identity compared to the setting you&amp;#039;re in. I&amp;#039;m interested in characters who are at moments of transition and are self-reflective. At those times you can feel alienated and I&amp;#039;m interested to know more about that and not interested to write about the moments in life when everything is going smoothly, which is not challenging. I like movies where the impetus to the main character&amp;#039;s change is not from a big outside dramatic event but from some small moment that makes you look inward.&amp;quot; Coppola wrote the screenplay for Somewhere in Paris, where she resided before moving to New York with the father of her two daughters, Thomas Mars, who fronts the French band Phoenix and also scored the film. Although set in Los Angeles, Somewhere has the feel of French cinema\u2014impressionist vignettes in which a relationship blossoms slowly, until a life is transformed. She writes on a laptop while listening to music and finds &amp;quot;writing is so hard for me, especially to start writing; it is the most challenging part&amp;quot; of filmmaking. &amp;quot;I used to stay up late at night and write but now I have little kids. I did a commercial with Harris Savides, the cinematographer on [Somewhere]. We were talking about how simply you could tell a story and I was curious to try to write from a guy&amp;#039;s point of view.&amp;quot; Coppola was formerly married to director Spike Jonze and her family includes cousins Nicholas Cage and Jason Schwartzman and aunt Talia Shire, but it was her father, Francis Ford Coppola (with whom she stayed in many hotel rooms on childhood location shoots), who taught her that &amp;quot;the most important thing was the script and the acting. And his teacher told him to sit right next to the camera. A lot of [directors] are now in another room, behind the monitor and I think the actors can really connect with you if you&amp;#039;re right there.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/news/a5428/sofia-coppola-on-somewhere-11907/>