Dan Callahan recently took on Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture and Sofia Coppola's Somewhere over at the House Next Door. I've only seen the former, and I should disclose that I briefly met Callahan when I stopped by his potluck on Thanksgiving. He seemed perfectly nice. But, oh! That title/premise, "On Rich Girl Cinema," kinda gets my [non-rich] girl hackles up.
Why, though? Callahan says, "The day before I saw Tiny Furniture, I watched Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, a movie that also comes from a place of privilege, as Dunham’s film does, but of a very different kind." So, same [rich, ovary-having] but different [otherwise completely unrelated films/makers]? Holy apophenia, Batman!
I tried to think of any good male analogues for these two female directors he's glommed together under this "privileged" purview. The Weitz brothers, maybe? And there are certainly directorial types like Jason Reitman who are born on third and think they've hit a triple. But I guess Reitman's stretching? He's a rich Canadian making films about knocked-up teen and laid-off adult working-class Americans! And, uh, the trials and tribulations that come with racking up lots of frequent flier miles?
Or maybe it's the whole no one would run a piece about Reitman and his ilk entitled "On Rich Boy Cinema" thing that's the issue. Amirite? Nepotism is bad and unfair and blah blah, but I guess it's especially irksome when the recipients of such largesse are "girls" who don't feel a need to slum it and hide their privileges in order to tell a story on film. [Unlike, say, Coppola ex Spike "Spiegel scion/sk8r boi" Jonze.] A story about the lives of privileged "girls" sometimes even. Those bitches! Now, do I think Dunham and Coppola and their respective work might benefit from examining the presumptions that come with class privilege? Sure. But I still don't think even a 24-year-old, much less a woman approaching 40, should ever be referred to and dismissed as a "girl." That's some kinda bullshit right there.
The piece itself starts with an admission not unlike the one I made about the alienation effect, as it were, that the Tiny Furniture hype had on me back in the spring. Then it turned out to be better than feared! Well and good.
But then there are three grafs on the crimes of Coppola, followed by five pitting Dunham against Coppola in a children of privilege cage match. Spoiler alert! Lena wins! We're told, "Lena Dunham, like Coppola, is a child of privilege as the daughter of photo artist Laurie Simmons and painter Carroll Dunham, but she’s a radically dissimilar type, both physically and emotionally, and the art world that she springs from is also quite different from Sofia Coppola’s Hollywood and European connections, which feel closer to fashion and music video" Four legs good! New York good! Hollywood bad! Fine art good! Fashion bad! Really? What of it? And what the hell is up with the whole "she’s a radically dissimilar type, both physically and emotionally" line? Coppola's appeared in her dad's and her brother's films and her ex-husband's videos, but she does not act in her own work. So what does it matter what she looks like, relative to Dunham's onscreen appearance?
I guess I just don't know what point is being made here. Lemme go back to the three Coppola paragraphs and try again. She is a "Hollywood princess." She is lauded for "surviving trying to act in her father Francis’s third Godfather movie." Also, apparently, Somewhere is the same movie as Lost in Translation. Coppola has "shamelessly retreated to what worked for her before." There is "suffering from the same kind of ennui" and the "rather prissy main theme" of being a fish out of water, with Italy taking the place of Japan. Uh, OK.
And then there is a whole bit about blond twins who pole-dance in Somewhere. Twice, it seems. [Remember, I haven't seen the film yet.] I think this comment is meant to be approving - "Coppola is canny enough to know that when she finds something as interesting as these two girls and their strip act, she doesn’t have to do anything but get out of the way and film it" - but "get out of the way and film it" doesn't sound like much craft or intent is involved. Just a "canny," feral instinct. And I'm not sure why pole-dancing is being singled out now, all of a sudden. There's a stripclub scene set to Peaches' "Fuck the Pain Away" in Translation, and Coppola directed Kate Moss on the pole for the White Stripes' cover of "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself." Is this meant as evidence of more "shameless" retreating to oeuvre greatest hits, maybe? Who can say?
The worst crime against cinema, though, is that "Coppola doesn’t seem to have any idea that practically no one in her audience will be able to identify or sympathize with her rich, successful, alienated protagonist, and she’s utterly unable to make his supposed plight more general, or more abstract, after the promise of her first scenes." Golly, somebody alert the folks remaking Gatsby! I never could understand that "identify or sympathize" tack, in criticism or the classroom. I mean, I fucking LOVED Kuroneko when I saw it this summer, without ever having been gangbanged by samurai or burnt alive or in league with a demon. Moreover, "[s]he’s repeating herself in a way that looks and sounds weirdly out-of-touch with what might interest a general audience." So what? What about Coppola's upbringing, privileged or no, would suggest for a second that her main aim is interesting a general audience? [Didn't she debut as the christened baby in The Godfather in part because her dad had lost his shirt over Zoetrope and needed the cash directing a Puzo adaptation would bring in?] Maybe this movie is not for you. Maybe that's the problem being called "privilege."
Callahan comes closest to defining what really rankles him about "the gazelle-like" Coppola in a backhanded compliment he pays Dunham. Onscreen, she has "a wildly reaching kind of sad-sack exhibitionism that covers her ass emotionally (if not physically) but leaves her open to being a winner or a success, professionally or romantically, if luck happens to come her way. Dunham’s privilege makes her bolder than a dumpy but bright, attractive girl would be from a less privileged background [emphasis mine], and she’s smart enough to see the comic potential in that without ever making anything a bigger deal than it is, or needs to be."
Neither woman cares what we think; that's their real privilege. Coppola is dismissed as "too shy, too cosseted" with "too-limited experience" from having traveled the world with her filmmaker father. Oberlin-grad Dunham is praised for skewering the New York art scene in which she was raised. She also looks just like a fag-hag rich girl the writer knew in college. Perhaps that's why Callahan is quick to make excuses on Dunham's behalf, even if it means writing in circles:
[T]here are a few curious lines, like the moment when Aura stands in front of Film Forum and confesses that she doesn’t like “foreign films” and is met with immediate agreement by Jed. I was so taken aback by this mindless provincialism, which reminded me of Dunham’s own tone-deaf James Mason insult in her Voice interview, that I was literally unable to hear several lines of dialogue after this exchange. Wouldn’t Aura/Dunham know enough to make this line funnier by saying that she doesn’t like, say, the cinema of a particular country* instead of just “foreign films”? And wouldn’t hipster Jed, who does his YouTube videos as “The Nietzschean Cowboy,” mock her for this, or at least agree semi-ironically? Maybe this is just a failure of performance or tone, and Dunham is young (later on, she gives a shout-out to Seinfeld re-runs), but let’s hope that this blanket dismissal isn’t meant to be taken seriously.
Maybe this wrongheaded piece is just a failure of performance or tone, too. Let's hope that this blanket dismissal [of Dunham's youthful ignorance, of Coppola's chops] in service of such a specious premise isn't meant to be taken seriously. Enough of the mindless provincialism that pits one female director against another as justification for liking or not liking otherwise unrelated films. Shouldn't Callahan know enough to make this article funnier by saying he doesn't like, say, the cinema of a particular director instead of just "rich girl cinema"? Why make anything a bigger deal than it is, or needs to be?
*Like, you know, boring old Italian films like the one Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanssen watched?
