Lost in Translation

Perhaps it makes sense that a woman whose earliest memory was on the set of Apocalypse Now would grow up to direct a dark fable about five adolescent girls who unapologetically and unceremoniously kill themselves, but for Sofia Coppola, the path to the director’s chair was an uncertain one. Literally christened into a filmmaking career, the third child and only daughter of Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppola was born in Manhattan in the spring of 1971, during the production of her father’s masterpiece, The Godfather. When it came time to shoot the baptism scene near the end of the film, the elder Coppola didn’t have to look very far for an infant, and the epic became the impromptu actress’ first, uncredited role. It wasn’t until father and daughter collaborated on a segment in the 1989 anthology film New York Stories, however, that Sofia began to attract critical attention. She and Francis co-wrote the half-hour children’s fantasy Life Without Zoe in an attempt to evoke the glamorous, candy-colored world of the classic Eloise children’s tales. In her dual role as costume designer, the 17-year-old swathed the film’s lead characters in lavish designer jewelry and threads. Later, Sofia retreated from the world of filmmaking and concentrated on fashion design, contributing her costuming talents to The Spirit of ’76 (1990), a Dazed and Confused-style comedy co-written by her brother Roman.

In The Godfather Part III, Sofia was swiftly cast in the role of Mary Corleone, which the critics found amateurish. Again, Coppola recoiled from Hollywood, entering the fine arts program at the California Institute of the Arts. There she began to nurture her interests in photography as well as costuming and experimented with video shorts. Around this time, Coppola read Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides and was captivated by its dark, haunting take of adolescent sexuality. More significantly, she relished the challenge of translating the fervid, pubescent-male viewpoint of the book to the big screen, and she began writing her own screen adaptation of the text. After securing a stellar cast, including James Woods, Kathleen Turner, and Kirsten Dunst, she began shooting the film in Toronto. When the finished work premiered in the Directors Fortnight of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, the reception was an about-face from her previous run-ins with the press. Critics applauded Coppola’s delicate, evocative handling of the tale, as well as her subtle, dream-like visual sense, aided by ace cinematographer Edward Lachman.

In the summer of 1999, Coppola married director Spike Jonze, who is director of the critically acclaimed Being John Malkovich. For her next project, she chose to fashion a screenplay not based on existing material but on her own experiences visiting Japan in her early twenties. The resulting character study, 2003’s Lost in Translation, drew from a disparate set of memories: her father’s work on a liquor ad with Akira Kurosawa in the mid-‘70s, her memories of a former mentor in the fashion industry, and her own uncertainty over her future. Starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson as two similarly displaced, maritally dissatisfied Americans toiling away the hours in a posh Tokyo hotel, the film built upon Suicides’ ethereal, deliberate pace and tone as it offered Murray one of the most textured, soulful roles of his career. After winning Golden Globes for Best Screenplay and Picture (Comedy or Musical), the young filmmaker took home the prize for Best Original Screenplay at the 2004 Academy Awards. Coppola also made history by becoming the first American woman to receive a Best Director Oscar nomination, though she ultimately lost the award to Peter Jackson.

Lost in Translation’s success garnered attention of another sort: critics and audiences speculated that Coppola’s marriage to Jonze was not-so-discreetly mirrored in one of Translation’s plot threads; the distant relationship between Johansson’s character and her flighty photographer husband. After the mirrored triumphs of Suicides and Lost, rumors swirled in the trades surrounding Coppola’s tertiary effort in the director’s chair, which she announced as an adaptation of Antonia Fraser’s historical novel Marie Antoinette: The Journey. The 2006 period piece/costume drama starred Virgin lead Kirsten Dunst as the titular queen of France and archduchess of Austria, alongside a four-star cast highlighted by the presence of Jason Schwartzman (the director’s cousin), Judy Davis, and the venerable Rip Torn as King Louis IV. Coppola took a bold and risky roll of the dice when she opted to relay the historical tale of Antoinette as a story of freewheeling youth (Variety terms it a film “about a girl who would just rather have fun”), laden with a contemporary alternative and post-punk soundtrack. Roundly booed at Cannes, the picture received devastating advance critical notices, including a pan in the aforementioned Variety notice that seemed to predict a significant box-office letdown. Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir assessed it as “a bit too pretty, proper, and trivial.”

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:85872~T1)