Lost in dissolution

Somewhere

Crit

Even when you're a bigtime movie star with money to burn, you get to the point where driving fast is no fun, cigs are no fun, booze is no fun, pills are no fun, and even twin blonde pole dancers are way less fun than you'd have thought. And that's when you need to get your 11-year-old--grounded and practically perfect in every way, despite the fact that her father is never around and not much when he is, and her mother has unidentified issues of her own serious enough that she needs to split for an unspecified length of time--into your life, because she is fun. And a damned good cook, to boot.

It's a film that you rather expect to be about growth, but it gets only to the point of recognizing the need for growth, without the thing itself. It reminded me of one of those New Yorker short stories that presents a slice of an unsatisfactory life and then gives way to the book reviews. Coppola (who, omg, turns 40 this year) takes her time, dwelling on static shot after static shot, and it's great to look at, but it's hard to tell whether there's some there somewhere.

And what are we to make of the fact that the bandanna-short skirts over cotton panties that the aforementioned 2blonde wear in their 2nd (!) appearance are essentially the same as the standard figure-skating getup that daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning, really 11 when shooting began, and luminescent) wears just a few film minutes later? Aside from the assumption (think back to the unforgettable opening shot of Coppola's best film) that the director, sensibly enough, has a thing for cotton panties?

Trailers

• Hanna--Speaking of luminescent young actors, Saoirse Ronan is trained and dispatched by her father (Eric Bana) to settle a score with his old boss (Cate Blanchett), by which I do not mean suing for back pay. Could be chilling or just comically awful.