Sofia Coppola

25Apr13

For my final set of blogs I am going to explore the career of Sofia Coppola. Sofia is another successful American woman director in Hollywood. Not only is Sofia a successful director but she has also been an actress, screenwriter and producer. For my first post regarding Sofia I will be exploring her success in the industry as well as the films she has directed. For my second post I will conduct a shot analysis of the film Lost in Translation and my final post will focus on the area of editing in Sofia Coppola films.

Sofia was born in New York City, New York in 1971 as the youngest child and only daughter to Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola. Sofia’s mother, Eleanor, was an artist and her father, Francis Ford Coppola is known as a legendary director for films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. According to Cook, “she attended the Cal Arts Fine Art Program, studies photography for a while, co-hosted a short-lived television magazine show (Hi Octane, 1994) with friend Zoe Cassavetes, appeared in cameo roles in music videos and set up a successful clothing company called Milk Fed in Japan with another close friend, Stephanie Hayman.”

Sofia’s first feature length film The Virgin Suicides was an adaptation of the book by the same name written by Jeffrey Eugenides. The Virgin Suicides is set in the 1970s and told the story from a perspective of a group of adolescent boys. According to IMDb, “A group of male friends become obsessed with a group of mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents after one of them commits suicide.” The Virgin Suicides was received well by the press as well as nominated for multiple awards. Sofia went on to direct her second feature film and in 2003, Lost in Translation was released. Sofia wrote, produced, and directed Lost in Translation that was set in Tokyo, starring Bill Murray as an aging movie star commissioned to film a whiskey commercial and Scarlett Johansson as the young wife accompanying her photographer husband on a celebrity photo-shoot, according to Cook. “The film picked up a plethora of prestigious award nominations, including Golden Globes for best picture, best screenplay and best director, and Independent Spirit  awards for best director, best feature and best screenplay” (Tasker, p. 131). In 2004 Coppola became the first American woman to be nominated for an academy award as best director. Coppola went on to direct Marie Antoinette (2006) and Somewhere (2010) with The Bling Ring being released later this year (2013).

It is recognized that Coppola has developed an aesthetic and becoming a feminine auteur. Sofia’s films evoke the gaze theory or the idea of the “gaze.” “Her films repeatedly ask the audience to associate themselves with a feminine point of view as, in the absence of the ability to depict “real” women, Coppola asks her audience to become real women: to be gazed upon, objectified, and even more importantly, aware of their complicit participation in this objectification” (Kennedy, p. 56). I will explore more into Sofia Coppola and her films in my next two post!

References

Kennedy, T. (2010). Off with Hollywood’s Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur. Film Criticism, 35(1), 37-59.

Cook, P. (2007). Sofia Coppola. In Tasker, Yvonne. (Eds.) (2011) Fifty contemporary film directors /London ; Routledge.

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