Top 5 Sofia Coppola Scenes | Archive

What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?

You're not interested in art?

No.

Well, look, we're going to do this thing.

We're going to have a conversation.

Hey, film spotters, time for our Wednesday archive drop. Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is getting a 20th anniversary re-release. Recently got some love from me, actually, Josh. You're a huge Sofia Coppola fan. Sam Van Halgren has gone crazy for some Sofia Coppola releases in film spotting history, but I like her work too. And I did love the musical choices.

And that's why I included one from Marie Antoinette on our top five needle drops. We're now going to dig into the archive to share a top five that unfortunately I wasn't able to be a part of, but we had a great critic filling in.

Yeah.

Angelica Jade Bastien, Chicago critic. She joined me and we had a lot of fun with this. Definitely gave Marie Antoinette its due in our list, I think. And the other thing, Adam, is I'm just going to say, I'm not going to give any picks away, but I must have been being the gracious host. I wanted to be the gracious host because Angelica's number one is kind of like the right answer for Sofia Coppola. I feel like, you know?

Sure.

And so I'm looking at it now and thinking, how did I not have that? But maybe I'll just say I was being nice.

I don't remember this list. It's certainly been a very long time since I heard it. I'm trying to see when it was from June 2017. Okay, so we're nine years in. Did Angelica, and I'm not saying this as a criticism, I am just curious, did she acknowledge Angelica? that it's kind of an obvious choice, but she made the case for it anyway?

I mean, I don't remember. This could have been a case. Sometimes with guests, we will actually share lists in advance and talk a little bit more about it. Could have been a case where we were like, we've got to have it on here somewhere and she wanted it. I don't know.

Okay. Well, let's see how it played out.

We'll find out. As we get into our top five, Sofia Coppola scenes. Now, I know we should probably say at the start here that you found this a little challenging because as you revisit some other films, you weren't as enamored with them as maybe you were in your memory. Or were there any of these you watched for the first time for this list? How'd you go about forming this list?

Well, overall with Coppola, I find her a very intriguing director, but I've never been really obsessed or taken.

By her work.

Okay.

What surprised me was how much I forgot from these movies. So I rewatched Marie Antoinette, and there's certain details I just started to pick up on that I found really fascinating, especially after watching The Beguiled and seeing how obsessed she is with rituals of femininity. Really fascinating. So a lot of my list picks up on moments that hone in on that.

Sounds great. Let's jump right into it. What did you put at number five?

So at number five is from The Virgin Suicides. It's about a half hour into the movie when Josh Hartnett, with that ridiculous wig, walks into the school, his jacket flung over his shoulder, and all the women are looking at him. And what intrigues me about that moment is just how it's representative of Coppola's obsession with how women look at the world and how... they kind of project their desires onto different figures. And he's a very obvious object of desire in The Virgin Suicides.

Yeah, and as I remember it, it's an extended montage.

Really?

Doesn't it follow him laying in his pool?

Yep.

And then a girl brings homework and brownies? Is that part of this scene?

Yeah, this girl brings brownies and he has his towel slung very, very, very low.

That's right.

I was like, they do that in high school? Did I miss something?

Yeah.

And the use of music, too. I forget what exactly the song is in that scene, but that's right. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So definitely a trait of hers, how she weaves all of that together. So good pick from The Virgin Suicides. That's where I'm going to start as well with my number five, but with a different scene, the homecoming dance. Now, as a reminder, this is the movie that it was Coppola's debut, and it's about five sheltered sisters who become this group object of fascination for the boys in their 70s suburban neighborhood, and even more so after the youngest sister commits suicide. So this is a rare moment, this homecoming dance scene that I'm picking, where the girls are let out of the house by

their parents to the homecoming dance, no less, of all places to let them go. And the sister played by Kirsten Dunst is announced as the homecoming queen. And it's as if these girls come to life for the first time. They're a little unsure of themselves earlier in the sequence, but when she's announced and they're kind of like accepted into this social gathering, they just come to life. And Coppola perfectly captures that sort of effervescence that you would feel.

So it's the music that we were just talking about that's coming into play here, the lighting, the use of props, the balloons that come down from the ceiling, how the characters interact with them. All of that really combines and it captures, as I was saying in our Beguiled review, sometimes what she does best is just a singular mood.

And to me, the scene is elation, you know, the elation that these girls are feeling. So we're both starting our lists with the beginning of Coppola's career. The Virgin Suicides. Which way are you going to go for your number four?

I'm actually going to choose something from The Beguiled.

Fair enough.

Not a spoiler, but sort of harkens to this idea of ritualism through femininity. And there's two really interesting dinner scenes. I won't spoil it for you guys.

Don't worry.

What's most interesting to me is what happens right before each of those dinner scenes and how the women get ready and young girls and seeing them lace up their corsets, putting pieces of fabric and ribbon around their wrists, trying to basically ape what they think of as being a woman and how it changes over the course of the film when we have the second dinner scene. It's just really beautiful mirroring of growth for these women. And I thought it was just really fascinating. And I just really love the ritual of getting ready myself. And I think it's amazing that Coppola is so interested in the interior lives of women. She hones in on these very small details with care and without condescension. She thinks that girlhood

is as worthy of study.

As anything else.

And I think that's what I really love about her. And rewatching the films, I liked moments like that from her work.

So I'm right there with you. I have the beguiled at number four. And I went with the exact same scene, actually, because... It was, it's incorporating, as you said, all of these things she's always been interested in, but how it would play out not only in this specific setting, but to these individual characters. This is an ensemble scene, but we get a sense of how each of them are experiencing it exactly through what you talked about, what they're wearing, what they're eating. I wrote in my review of The Beguiled how if you want to know how a Coppola character is feeling, don't listen to what they're saying. Don't listen to, you don't get any exposition about them. Watch what they're wearing. And watch what they're eating. And usually

that is going to tell you. That's how they express themselves and their inner lives are in those things, which sounds reductionistic, but that's how we all are. I mean, and that's the sort of detail that cinema can capture. So I think it absolutely comes to the fore here in this dinner scene where McBurney, the Colin Farrell character, joins them. They look like overripe Easter eggs in some of these dresses that they wear. It's just so overdone.

And I like how they make a fuss over the lavish spread on the table, too. Isn't this the scene where one of them, it might be Kirsten Dunst's character, is sure to point out that it's her recipe that was used?

Yes.

That moment, that first dinner scene, has a lot of really sharp humor. And it specifically feels like the kind of humor I'm used to hearing from Southern women who say, bless your heart.

Okay.

And it's very specific how they're kind of jockeying for his attention by mentioning all the labor they put into it.

It's my recipe. I picked the apples.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's more the fight between these actual girls and women that's interesting than Colin Farrell himself, who is delighted, though, and is just like cracking up.

Literally eating it up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's true. It's kind of a passive aggressiveness. And there's a shift there, too, where the women and girls start to turn against each other. And then the movie turns where they go a different direction.

Yes.

All right, we'll leave that there. How about your number three Coppola moment?

So my number.

Three comes from Marie Antoinette. And there's a lot of really great moments and images from this film. So it was really hard to pick one. But again, I think because of watching The Beguiled really recently, I'm kind of obsessed with how these characters dress and how they're clothed. And there's a moment very, not just really a moment, but a scene really early in Marie Antoinette when she's traveling from Austria to France and she has to go through that sort of tent fixture. She has to take off everything she's wearing, everything that's a sign of her past life in Austria to become a sort of girl woman.

She's not really a woman yet, but it's a very sharp change in how she dresses, even how she stands and presents herself. And the moment when she kind of walks out on the side of France in this beautiful blue dress I was just like I don't know I was just really taken by it and just the change in Kirsten Dunst's posture because of just wearing just a more elaborate different gown with all these different fixtures to keep her in place it was just really I think it beautiful depiction of how clothing can affect identity. Sure.

Yeah. Another instance of costuming, projecting inner life or at least inner experience that I considered too for a scene from Marie Antoinette. I'm going to go with a different film though for my number three. It comes from The Bling Ring and it's the long distance robbery. So this movie is from 2013. It's based on the true story of a group of California teens who burglarized a string of celebrity homes around L.A. And this was about 2009, I think, when this was happening. So a lot of these robberies are what you'd probably expect. They're Coppola parties.

They're celebratory. They're putting us in that ecstatic mood of these young people who have pulled off these robberies and are sometimes trying on the celebrities' clothes, basically being them for a few moments. And it puts us in that experience, the way she can do so well. But then there's this scene, which is Completely different. It's a long, slow zoom to depict the robbery of Audrina Partridge's house. It begins really far away. It's like a distant establishing shot.

And we can see these two figures just slipping into the house. And we slowly, slowly, really slowly zoom in. Like one of these zooms where you hardly notice it until you realize, oh, the house is now filling the frame. But that's as close as we get. By that point, they've rifled through all the rooms and they're making their way out. And the scene ends there. Mm-hmm. I think what's interesting about this one is that it's such an anomaly for Coppola. You know, it's more, it's a moment of detachment when I usually experience that we're completely in the moment with her characters. We're right there alongside them.

And this just stands apart where it's observational, it's removed. The characters as a result come across as little furtive. They're even insignificant. So I don't know why, you know, I probably need to spend more time thinking about why at this point, or in this movie, she wants to distance her camera from those characters. Like what's being said there?

We talked in our Beguiled review about, is there some sort of self-awareness in her, maybe not in her as a person, but her as a filmmaker, in her films growing? Is the Beguiled a turning point there where we're starting to take a step back from those moment-to-moment experiences? But for whatever reason, it's a really remarkable moment in her films that stands apart for being so different from the other ones.

Oh, I definitely agree, especially because I think Coppola's defining feature as a director is her intimacy. So to have a moment like that completely like.

Yeah, not intimate at all, really. I mean, it's... Clinical almost. Clinical, that makes sense. And it's almost as it's depicting an invasion of intimacy too is interesting. So yeah, maybe there's something there. So that gets us to our number two picks. What did you have for your number two Coppola moment?

Oh, this was so hard.

So... I'm going to choose just a line from The Virgin Suicide.

Fair enough.

Where, you know, like the older Tripp Fontaine, originally played by Josh Hartnett, like they're doing the interviews like about how they felt about these girls. And he describes Lux, Kirsten Dunst's character, as a still point in a turning world. And I think that can be used to describe pretty much every female character in Sofia Coppola's work.

You know, that's perfect. And at first I was thinking, OK, a line of dialogue. You don't think of her necessarily as a writer or a dialogue writer. And maybe that came from the original source novel. But it does describe exactly what it's almost like she took that as a model for here's how my movie should look as well.

So you see maybe a perfect pairing of source material and filmmaker there very early on in her career.

Yeah, I just thought it was a very evocative line and it was a line that jumped out just because I think it can be used to describe her approach to setting and character and perspective because that's what makes Coppola, I think, such a distinctive director is her intimacy and her obsession with really getting into the skin of her characters and really seeing everything through their eyes to the point where this isn't supposed to be a recreation of reality.

but a recreation of almost somebody's memory of what happened. And so that line just really jumped out at me and I thought was just a really beautiful line too.

Yeah, good pick. All right, number two, I'm getting to my favorite Coppola film, Lost in Translation. Sorry to be so conventional by naming it that way, but it certainly offered the most moments to pick from for me, I thought. And I ended up landing in the same place as listener Jeff Milo, who left this voicemail.

Hey, Film Spotting, this is Jeff Milo from Ferndale, Michigan, calling about the Sofia Coppola scenes. I know a lot of people are going to tell you about Lost in Translation. I'm sure the heaviest scenes, like the muffled whisper or maybe that quiet moment that they have in the hallway. But to me, the nexus of the film is the, does it get easier scene? I can't say enough about it, particularly that it's a really fascinating study in body language from these two actors who are lying down and kind of barely moving. Um, if you play the clip on the air, uh, the regrettable thing is that the frequency of Bill Murray's blinking won't be audible, but the, uh, the often remarks upon subtleties of his acting style are,

are really concentrated so powerfully, uh, in this scene. And I think, I think Johansson plays it great as well in terms of being kind of curious and attempting compassionate at the same time. But, uh, There's such a stunning sense for pacing, like this is how people talk when they're exhausted but can't fall asleep. Or, you know, this is how people talk late, late into the night, you know, when it's quiet. But the sentiments that he shares about his life, 30 years advanced from hers, and the way he kind of shows his wounds, but sort of downplays those wounds at the same time because he doesn't want to scare her. He wants to encourage her.

I don't know.

I could go on.

It's packed.

With subtext, and maybe you should just play the clip instead of me rambling.

What about marriage?

Does that get easier?

That's hard. We used to have a lot of fun. Lydia would come with me when I made the movies, and we would laugh about it all. Now she doesn't want to leave the kids, and she doesn't need me The kids miss me, but they're fine. It gets a whole lot more complicated when you have kids.

Yeah, it's scary.

It's the most terrifying day of your life, the day the first one is born.

Yeah, nobody ever tells you that.

Your life, as you know it, is gone. never to return. But they learn how to walk and they learn how to talk and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.

So this scene takes place, of course, after a long night of talking when Bill Murray's disaffected movie star and Scarlett Johansson's disenchanted young wife are drifting off to sleep At that moment, she unloads this really what's a desperate question for her. Jeff's voicemail pretty much nails what makes the moment great, but another listener, Peterson Hill, he added a bit more on my Larson on Film Facebook page that I wanted to share. He wrote, the way Coppola frames the scene is beautiful, with much of it occurring in that single shot from the bird's eye view. She captures the humanity and the secret longing that makes this her finest film. And re-watching Lost in Translation just a couple days ago, I remember reading hoping that that bird's

eye view shot would sustain. And she does have to cut eventually, whether it was her aesthetic choice or because of something in the performances to a more traditional side-by-side shot. But for that overhead view, because you get to see some of those performance gestures that Jeff was talking about, it's really a lovely moment. So that's my pick for my number two, Does It Get Easier from Lost in Translation. Well, that brings us to our number one picks. Angelica, what did you end up going with there?

I went with.

Lost in Translation, partially because I rewatched it rather recently and was really struck by certain moments. And I'm going to highlight the ending between Bill Murray's character and Scarlett Johansson and the whole unheard whisper thing, because I think it sort of captures a lot of my issues and And interest with Coppola at the same time.

Okay.

And I think she.

Sometimes has an issue with mistaking opacity for complexity.

Ah.

And I think that comes across a lot with that one moment. And people's also obsession with figuring out what he whispered in her ear, which, in my opinion, doesn't matter at this point.

Yeah, I would agree.

There's also something about their kiss that sort of throws me off now. And I think partially it's because just how young Scarlett Johansson is. I mean, she was younger than I am right now. And so it sort of changes the tenor of the relationship for me.

As a woman.

So that ending... sort of got under my skin, I think, in the wrong way. And so sometimes I feel Coppola's perspective, instead of seeming light and beautiful, can curdle.

Yeah, that's fascinating because having rewatched it, I had the same reaction how young Scarlett Johansson was. And also, it was much less platonic on this viewing than in my memory.

Same.

But the movie obviously has not changed.

I have.

I don't know if I've seen Lost in Translation since it first came out in what, 03? I agree. So, you know, I'm at a different age. I, you know, so I have a daughter who is closer to Scarlett Johansson's age in that movie now. When I first saw it, I was probably, I'd have to do the math, closer to her age. You know what I mean? So you're seeing it almost from a Pierce perspective to now maybe the Bill Murray perspective. And when I was younger, I remember admiring how platonic it was, how cool it was that that could be this relationship, this mentor relationship could be.

And now I see that there was more going on there, at least through my current lens, than what I had thought initially. The kiss is part of that. I think in the scene that I picked, the way there's that one gesture towards her foot that, yes, ends in patting, but that's very intimate to go for someone's barefoot. And you may end it with a pat, like a fatherly pat.

But the fact that you went there and I'm not saying this makes it a better or worse movie, that I like it more or less. It's just fascinating to me how I'm viewing it differently. And it sounds like you're on the fence a little bit about whether the unheard whisper is ultimately a positive thing or how much is actually there. But I think it does speak to this willingness to let lost in translation B, whatever you want it to be, which is interesting in Coppola's career too because we keep talking about how specific she is in her character's points of view. Yet this one stands a little bit apart where we're not always sure what they're thinking. As intimate as the movie is and as much as it captures that sense of dislocation, there's a

lot left up to us. And the fact that it opened up other things to me on this reviewing, it's why it's still my favorite film of hers.

Oh, I definitely agree. Rewatching it just a few days ago as well, I was struck by how romantic parts of it felt and intimate in a way that crossed a line. That I was just like, this could, I was expected scenes to go differently, even though I was like, I know I've seen this movie.

It's not going to go in this direction. But you're right.

We do bring a lot of ourselves to what we watch. And that totally affects our viewing and how we interpret things, even over the course of time.

I definitely agree. And I can't think of another film that I've experienced that so starkly as with this revisit of Lost in Translation. So despite all the love for Lost in Translation, it didn't land at my number one spot. I actually went for a scene from Marie Antoinette at number one. It's the shoes and cakes montage. I just love all the anachronistic music in this movie in general.

You've got Susie and the Banshees. You've got The Cure. You've got New Order. And then you have Bow Wow's I Want Candy, which anchors this montage. Kirsten Dunst is queen here. She's playing dress up all while indulging in cakes and champagne. So this movie was such a bold experiment, very controversial, not without its issues. We've already touched on it in our Beguiled review, but I can't help but but admire what she went for here. This is maybe the starkest example of Coppola taking a massive story and looking at it through the narrowest of lenses. But when she captures that experience, that moment in that mood, when she does it so ecstatically as she does here, you know, what it would be like to have the whole world

at your feet and the endless shoes to put them in. I just, I find the experience exhilarating that she's able to do that. So I think that probably the shoes and cakes montage is my number one, because only Coppola can, would consider the story of Marie Antoinette and come up with a scene like this. So number one for me.

That's a really good number one pick. I actually really love that montage scene. Also, it's just so fun and buoyant and distinctive. And I think as much as I am usually a bit colder on Coppola, I do really appreciate how she really goes for just really goes for it, even if I don't agree with what it happens to be a lot of times. And I think Marie Antoinette is a good example of that because she does not care about historical reality. She's just creating this mood and presence and energy that feels very much like a young girl getting power she does not know.

What to do with.

So those are our five picks. Do you want to share a couple others that you considered? I have a few here. The Whisper was definitely in the running for me. The karaoke scene also from Lost in Translation, that's one where we just get, I think, that moment, that exact moment is captured so well that you're right there with them.

Really that whole night, that kind of bleary, wandering through Tokyo night, I think she does well. And then I had one more that almost made the list. It's going back to the Virgin Suicides. There's this montage of the boys, the neighborhood boys, getting up the courage to call the Lisbon sister's But they only communicate by playing records. And then they call them back. So this goes back and forth.

A listener on Twitter, Hot Dog Thursday, suggested this one as well. It says, this is where the boys and the Lisbon girls communicate through records. It's a mix of joy, desire, melancholy, and mystery. And I think that captures that scene pretty well. Did you have any others that you thought about?

I actually really do like that scene from The Virgin Suicides. Also because it just feels like so high school.

In a lot of ways.

Oh, totally.

The technology may change, but just rewatching it, I was just like, oh, this is so weird.

The awkwardness and yet the excitement of it. And then, yeah.

The sincerity, the earnestness.

Oh, yes.

Oh, it's just, it was a little intense rewatching, partially because my 10-year high.

School reunion is this year.

Are you going?

Hell no.

But I just, it made me think about high school and how I never want to return.

Yeah. Yeah.

Better left in the past. Any other moments you considered?

I just wanted to highlight how struck I was re-watching Marie Antoinette. I was kind of cool on it the first time I saw it, which was around the time it came out, so I haven't seen it for a while. And it's so interesting watching it next to the Beguiled and see how much she's grown and is pushing herself in a really interesting direction as an actress. So I just wanted to highlight that. I think someone should write a piece about Sofia Coppola, Kirsten Dunst, and their collaborations together.

Very rich, collaborative experiences.

I think that someone should be you. We'll look for that.

I'm afraid the Queen has a somewhat artistic temperament. It's not too much, is it?

Oh, no.

Those were Josh's and Angelica's top five Sofia Coppola scenes from June 2017. You can access top five lists and other reviews online. like those from the Film Spotting Archive, at your fingertips by being a Film Spotting Family member, plus bonus shows and a whole lot more. You can learn more at filmspottingfamily.com. We thank you for listening.

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