Sofia Coppola notices how young women behave when they have little say over their lives. We value her patience, humour and care with actors, though her films can keep watching long after a scene has told us enough.
Fi1m perspective
In Priscilla (2023), Cailee Spaeny is small in a wide room, and Jacob Elordi takes up most of the frame when he enters. Cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd makes the imbalance visible without forcing it, using soft light and low lamps. Coppola lets their difference in size do the explaining. We rate that patience highly, especially when she gives the people as much attention as the furnishings.
The Virgin Suicides (2000) was her first feature, and it remains our strongest recommendation. Adapting Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel, Coppola takes the neighbourhood boys’ fascination with the Lisbon sisters seriously without mistaking it for knowledge. Kathleen Turner makes their mother’s certainty disturbing, while Kirsten Dunst gives Lux a personality the other sisters are not always allowed. The gentle social comedy stops the adults becoming convenient monsters and makes the girls’ unhappiness harder to dismiss. We still want to know more about the sisters than the boys’ memories permit.
Lost in Translation (2003) brought the breakthrough, with Bill Murray among the actors who respond well to her preference for understatement. Marie Antoinette (2006) took her into a young queen’s life, using anachronistic songs alongside lavish period detail. Somewhere (2010) turned to Hollywood celebrity and a father and daughter. The settings change more readily than her concern with loneliness, though by Priscilla some of the ways of filming it have become predictable.
We felt uneasy during the early party scene in Priscilla, because Elordi’s Elvis asks the schoolgirl to return with a kindness that offers no obvious warning. Coppola lets that courtesy unsettle us rather than giving him a villain’s entrance. Editor Sarah Flack compresses the passing years into brief glimpses of Christmases, a car and a telephone. Phoenix’s score stays low and warm; songs from later years prevent the montages becoming exercises in period accuracy.
The difficulty comes when waiting ceases to tell us anything new. In the second half of Priscilla, another beautifully arranged room cannot compensate for a scene that repeats what we already understand. It is still worth an evening for the first hour’s quiet unease. Begin with The Virgin Suicides if her films are unfamiliar, and allow time afterwards before putting something else on.
Biography
Sofia Coppola is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. She was born on 14 May 1971 in New York City, the daughter of filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola and Eleanor Coppola. She began her career as an actress, appearing in several of her father's films, before moving into directing.
Her feature directorial debut was The Virgin Suicides (1999). Subsequent films include Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006), Somewhere (2010), The Bling Ring (2013), The Beguiled (2017), On the Rocks (2020) and Priscilla (2023), on which she is also credited as writer and producer.
