NYFF 58 Review: Sofia Coppola Returns to the Father Daughter Relationship and Personal Insecurities in 'On the Rocks'
“Can you just act a little less excited about this? Because it’s my life and it might be falling apart.”
I love Sofia Coppola films. I’d be hard pressed to forget the dreamy melancholia of The Virgin Suicides, nor the existential wandering of Lost in Translation, nor even the atheistic pleasantries found in Marie Antoinette. Though not numerous in sheer volume, but rich in merit, her films are sublime indulgences of cinema that are all great, near perfect in some cases, and as an auteur of the medium, her films are a natural cause for celebration.
So bust out your ‘Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola’ shirts. Pop open that bottle of Sofia Rosé. And throw on some Phoenix. Because it’s time to herald the long awaited release of On the Rocks, Coppola’s seventh feature film and first foray into the space of comedy. Though, true, On the Rocks is a comedy, this is a Sofia Coppola comedy. If the first trailer were any cause for hesitancy with its hard lean into rom-com territory, rest assured On the Rocks is not that. Rather, its is a soft-spoken inspection of the father daughter relationship and the insecurities that come with the middle years of life, complete with Coppola’s defining directorial flourishes, introspective dealings, delicate touches, and all.
In a ‘pre-pandemic’ New York, Laura (Rashida Jones) finds herself stuck. Now in her late thirties, life has started to settle in. A successful debut novel has given way to a pre-sold follow-up that fails to write itself. The honeymoon phase of marriage is long gone and in comes the middle years of parenthood. And her marriage, most problematically, is on the rocks. Her husband Dean (Marlon Waynes) is a rising star at an opaque unicorn tech start-up that has become all consuming. His all too frequent travel trips have pulled him away from his family, and subtle, not-so-nothing actions have triggered red flags for Laura that he might be cheating.
Reenforcing this concern is Laura’s father Felix (Bill Murray), a charismatic playboy of the old guard who loves to inject his seemingly harmless, but very much dated and misogynistic, perspectives into the conversation. “Males are forced… to impregnate all women,” he’ll say after a career of sleeping around with other women, unaware that his behavior has uprooted his family dynamic and caused long-term familial issues. It’s a long-standing relationship, one that endures ideological impasse because of family kinship, but through their interactions, Laura ends up taking her father’s faults and projecting them onto her husband. With a cause for concern and a father feeding into her fears, the two embark on a romp all over town, tailing Dean in the hopes of learning the truth.
Wrap all this in the sheen of New York. With all its verticality and sprawl, its concrete and glass, its vibrancy and flare, Coppola’s camera sets her characters against their environment in a similar manor to that of Tokyo in Lost in Translation. The city is alive, complete with the hustle and bustle you would expect from The Big Apple, but while the city that never sleeps moves around Laura, you feel an even greater sense of her stagnation, a desire to feel like you’re moving in sync with the city, but constantly falling out of pace; New York is place where something’s always happening, but for Laura, it doesn’t quite feel that way.
Maybe it’s the routine of motherhood taking its toll after its twelfth year. Or maybe the inability to strike up a second act in her writing career. Or maybe it’s a slowing love life that fails to spark. Most of Coppola’s oeuvre centers around perspective of young women — think The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, even Somewhere to some degree — but On the Rocks is now taking that perspective and aging it, engaging with a more mature perspective that comes when you turn the corner on 39. While Lost in Translation may be the go to connection because of the presence of Bill Murray (and make no mistake there are valid parallels to draw) Somewhere is the true compliment, both in thematic connection and evolution.
Both are mid-life crisis films, but this feels more immediate to Coppola now. While Somewhere spotlighted a waning celebrity father figure who’s lurid view of women shapes how he sees his daughter, On the Rocks is as if that narrative advanced thirty years and shifted focus to the daughter. Now in her late thirties, the ongoing conversations and experiences Laura shares with her father ends up shaping how she now sees other male figures in her life. Is it possible that Laura’s husband is cheating on her in the same way that her own father cheated on her mother, disrupting the family unit and generating domestic trauma in the process? Perhaps, but her relationship with Felix has distorted the way she sees her husband. Without being reductive, it is classic “daddy issues” manifesting themselves in the present.
Those issues become the backbone of On the Rock’s self-deprecating humor. More of a comedy lite I suppose, much of the film’s sense of humor is delivered with dry pan and sharp wit, often deriving from endearing banter between the ever-likable Murray and Jones — Murray in particular laying on the charm we’ve come to adore for decades. There are small pleasures in seeing a father and daughter spar with light-hearted words, often taken in jest. Assertions are made funny for their sense of irony or absurdism rather than their ability to generate knee-jerk belly laughs, and Coppola isn’t afraid to make a joke at the expense of our leads to punctuate their inner detriments, smuggling personal insecurities under the guise of a punchline.
While you’re supposed to be laughing, there still very much is that signature Sofia Coppola subtly that elicits emotional weight. On her usual frequency, it’s often found in what goes unsaid, the thematic core bubbling right below the surface, driving the small eye gestures and momentary pauses that give way to pensive thought. And true to her oeuvre, she continues to value perspectives of women told with a strong authorial voice. But like most tenured directors, she also tries something new, returning to previous addresses with new material to build on what came before. On the Rocks feels like the natural progression of that. It’s another understated work of immense pleasure from one of America’s best working directors, showing us once again why we celebrate whenever a new Sofia Coppola film comes around.
