GRADE: B+

“Somewhere,” the new film by Sophia Coppola (“Lost in Translation,” “Marie Antoinette”) is essentially an hour-and-a-half-long metaphor. From the opening scene with a car going round and round a circular track, we instantly realize that Coppola is telling a story, not with words, but with images. It is a bold, often exasperating, and ultimately surprisingly effective choice. “Somewhere” is a movie you feel.

Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a roguish Hollywood bad boy holed up at the famous Chateau Marmont, once a glamorous Tinseltown hideout that, like many of its occupants, now is shabby and living on borrowed time.

Johnny spends his days driving aimlessly in his black Ferrari and his nights so numbed by alcohol and drugs that even strippers and prostitutes cannot distract him from his boredom. Only when his life of debauchery and excess is interrupted by a surprise visit from his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) does Johnny begin to face up to his hollow routine and confront the sordid trajectory of his life.

“Somewhere” employs unblinking takes and entire scenes that play far longer than their expiration date to create a life of agonizing doldrums. The film is a slow-burn character study, utilizing Euro-minimalism to arrive at a moving and empathetic moment of self-realization for a man whose midlife crisis should still be a decade or more off but is artificially activated by his abnormal celebrity lifestyle.

Coppola has been down this road before in the superior “Lost in Translation.” In many ways, “Somewhere” feels like a companion piece (some may see it as little more than a dull retread of the same material), recycling similar themes and ideas right down to specific scenes.

Dorff, who took several years off from acting because of what many insiders describe as a life all too closely mirroring “Somewhere’s” fiction, brings an unexpected charm and vulnerability to a role that required both narcissism and sympathy. Fanning’s Cleo splendidly evokes a Coppola trope: young girls trying to make their way in the world. When she is not present, Johnny is bearingless. When she is, all other women might as well be invisible. Almost.

The wryly hypnotic “Somewhere” ends in ambivalence. As with “Lost in Translation,” the characters’ future is open to interpretation. Certainly our lives are no less plotted, no less unclear. We have dreams, resolutions and ambitions, but only time will tell if those aspirations muscle their way past our inhibitions, personal peccadillos and self-destructive tendencies.

Somewhere

Cast: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius

Director: Sophia Coppola

Rated: R (for sexual content, nudity and language)

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

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