Directed by Sofia Coppola

A Retrospective of the Films of Sofia Coppola

It's the longing that does it for me. Sofia Coppola's films ooze it. From that first time Kirsten Dunst as Lux Lisbon appears on screen, lollipop in her mouth, I myself crushing, longing along with the male protagonists of her first, and best, feature The Virgin Suicides to her stirring re-imagining of The Beguiled and her latest effort Priscilla, hearkening back to the lavish isolation of Marie-Antoinette, she seems to understand the human, specifically female, desire for more, knowing that there will always be something we feel we need that is just beyond our grasp.

Ms. Coppola is an auteur in the truest sense of the term. Her characters hang together, downtrodden, caught in some sort of limbo under some ruthless, but beautiful, influence (i.e., a teen heartthrob, an aging movie star, a French palace and its spoils, your daughter, a hot klepto, a sworn enemy, your philandering father, and Elvis). She tends to like punishing Kirsten Dunst. She places wonderful, often anachronistic needle drops and experimental scores by groups like Air and Phoenix, amongst the lace-sheered rooms, detailed with the artifacts of feminine beauty or the blank, spare spaces of her characters' isolation and loneliness. She tends to comment on celebrity and the obsessions, annoyances, and alienations that come along with it. 

The Virgin Suicides (1999) -- Credit: Paramount

Lost in Translation (2003) -- Credit: Focus Features

Marie-Antoinette (2006) -- Credit: Sony Pictures

Somewhere (2010) -- Credit: Focus Features

The Bling Ring (2013) -- Credit: A24

The Beguiled (2017) -- Credit: Focus Features

On the Rocks (2020) -- Credit: Apple TV+

Priscilla (2023) -- Credit: A24

Rankings

I hope to capture much of that here with this list, a ranking of Sofia Coppola's filmography.

8

★★★

Easily the most immediately forgettable of Coppola's films, "The Bling Ring" is a dramatized re-telling of a 2008 crime spree in which a group of Hollywood teenagers stole over $3 million worth of cash and merchandise from celebrities, including Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. A breakout vehicle (post-"Harry Potter") for Emma Watson, the film fails to dig in enough to have much to say about the celebrity-obsessed culture it wishes to satirize. Even so, it does find a solid emotional center in Marc, the one male member of the gang, played with brilliantly realized desire and angst by Israel Broussard.  

Credit: A24

That the most engaging shot of this film is a still long shot of one of the robberies speaks to both Coppola's strength as a visual artist and weakness as a storyteller. Her work with the late Harris Savides' here provides just about the only thing to hold onto in this fleeting sexy klepto of a movie. And that performance by Israel Broussard. 

7

★★★1/2

The first hour of this film is an absolute masterpiece, and the film as a whole is Sofia's best work visually. The anachronistic 80s New Wave soundtrack cuts work way better than they should, and Kirsten Dunst's performance as the young Dauphine (and eventual Queen) of France is her best. But the latter parts of the film lose too much of the humor and wit of the first. Jamie Dornan shows up to cuckold King Louis (Jason Schwartzman) and the movie just loses way too much steam, when, in fact, the opposite should be the case. I blame "50 Shades of Grey" for making me hate Dornan even more than I already did and thus destroying the end of this movie for me on re-watch. Also, Coppola's lack of interest in delineating the historical elements of Antoinette's downfall is a major missed opportunity. 

Credit: Sony Pictures

Antoinette's quite literal transition from Princess of Austria to Dauphine of France is one of my favorite sequences from any film. Dunst's ability to play so perfectly a girl so much younger than she at the time is great, especially when coupled with the fact that her character is being actually stripped of her identity. 

6

★★★★

A major outlier for Coppola that works so well mostly due to Bill Murray's charms. Rashida Jones stars as a blocked up writer concerned that her husband (Marlon Wayans) is cheating on her. Murray plays her charismatic, philandering father, who comes back into her life to help her investigate. A more straightforward comedy than any other of her works, I found it a surprising look at being married and a parent and not being able to remove yourself from your own perception of the way those you love the most see you. Way smarter in the end than what I expected it to be. Not sure why I was concerned. It is full of Sofia's keen eye for detail and the influence of others on our lives. 

Credit: Apple TV+

This is Sofia Coppola at her most unambiguous, yet still clever enough to play with our very perceptions and expectations of this kind of film. Bill Murray getting out of that traffic ticket is worth your free month of Apple TV+ and you can watch Ted Lasso after.

5

★★★★

Now, here is the sweaty Southern gothic near bloodbath we never knew Sofia had in her (and that we needed this summer). Visually, she came close to outdoing herself with this one. Colin Farrell's take on Captain McBurney, the wounded Confederate soldier originally played by Clint Eastwood, is equal parts charming and calculated, almost shapeshifting as he plays just the right role needed for the three central women of the Farnsworth School, played in descending order (by age) by Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst (in her best role in years), and Elle Fanning. Check out my full review. 

Credit: Focus Features

My one wish is that this movie took the dynamic created by the bottom two of the three images above and explored it a little bit deeper. Clearly, Coppola was interested in the inherent smallness of this story, but there is a betrayal within a betrayal at play here that could've been even more satisfying if lumped in with this thing's fast-building snowball of a final act.

4

★★★★

Unlike the previous two on this list, the deliberate nature of "Somewhere" doesn't initially entertain. In fact, it took a few tries for me to find enough rhythm to keep at it. When I finally did though, I found perhaps Coppola's most rewarding picture, the story of the emotional redemption of downtrodden Hollywood action star, Johnny Marco, played with beautiful sincerity by Stephen Dorff. When his young daughter (Elle Fanning) comes more fully into his life, Johnny's change is less of a forced one and more of realization about where happiness actually comes from. 

Credit: Focus Features

You're likely to experience discomfort in the deliberate manner in which Coppola forces the sounds of silence in this film. Director of Photography Harris Savides' camera is, on the other hand, muted, calm, slow, even still. But each frame is gorgeous and each sound amplified without the noise of talking. Everything is on Dorff's face in this film. Everything. 

3

★★★★1/2

Coming on the heels of the previous year's Elvis, in which Baz Luhrmann throws all his annoying tricks at the screen at once to service fans of the long-fading star, Sophia Coppola's Priscilla is a clear antidote. A clear spiritual sequel to Coppola's Marie-Antoinette, it finds a teen girl swept up in a whirlwind of power and riches. Cailee Spaeny is a revelation as the titular character. Her performance is quietly sad yet unendingly sweet. Perhaps it is sad because of her sweetness. The stillness in Coppola is up to eleven here, moved along only by her signature period detail and Spaeny's face, her eyes, as she waits and waits and waits and waits...

Credit: A24

...for her fleeting moments of spark riding only on the whims of America's "King." The film is a masterclass in production design, costume design, a chamber drama of the American 1960s so lavish and lived in--Priscilla is truly the opposite of Elvis. 

2

★★★★1/2

"Lost in Translation" remains one of the most beautiful and personal films I've seen. There is just so much to these "lost" characters, the unhappy newlywed Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and the bored former action star, Bob Harris (Bill Murray), both Americans suspended in states of loneliness and isolation and doubt in the most foreign of cities, Tokyo. This is all due to Coppola's casting of and full trust in Bill Murray as a dramatic (and comedic) actor. The way this film slowly builds to its deservingly guarded ending is so endlessly intimate...and watchable, a balancing act few filmmakers could pull off. 

Credit: Focus Features

"Let's never come here again because it would never be as much fun." 

Watching two lonely, isolated people collide in such an intimate way in such a massive place as Tokyo creates a type of irony that made this film such a hit with both critics and audiences. Coppola found ways to be daring on both small and large scales here, and every frame of this film has us feeling right along with the pathos in both characters, a nobody and a celebrity. 

1

★★★★★

For a film featuring the deathly angst of its five female protagonists, the Lisbon sisters of an idyllic 1970s suburban Michigan, it's simply amazing that it is also one of the very few films that accurately captures the wanting that lives inside a teenage boy. For that alone, "The Virgin Suicides" remains one of the most important films of my lifetime and one of the first to help me see the value in smaller, slower films. Perfection is attained in several avenues here, including the casting of James Woods and Kathleen Turner as the girls' parents as well as the work of the most sultry Kirsten Dunst ever, the painful narration by Giovanni Ribisi (taken straight from the prose of Jeffrey Eugenides' lovely novel), and the angsty-synth pop score by the French band Air. 

Credit: Paramount

Visions of the past bathed in pastels, muted by dimmed houselights, dressed up 1970s pop culture, the soundtrack of idealistic remembered youth. Heartache, elation, lust, Todd Rundgren, pain, death, Air. This is an easy all-timer for me, a film I return to often and never tire of.  

Bonus

While the Directed by series is limited to a director's feature-length films, Coppola's first film, a 14-minute short called "Lick the Star" is worth a watch. There is so much of what we would eventually see from her work here. There are especially some rich parallels in "The Virgin Suicides," "The Bling Ring," and "The Beguiled." 

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