The film follows Johnny Marco (played by Stephen Dorff), a newly famous actor, as he recuperates from a minor injury at the Chateau Marmont, a well-known Hollywood retreat.

Despite money, fame and professional success, Marco is trapped in an existential crisis and has an emotionally empty daily life.

Critics praised the patience of the film's visual style and its empathy for a handful of characters, but some felt that Somewhere repeated themes in Coppola's previous work or that its protagonist was less than sympathetic.

They spend time together in his room and he brings her with him on a publicity trip to Milan, where they stay in a lavish hotel suite and he has a blonde woman as an overnight guest.

[5] She recalls sampling all the gelato flavors on a Milanese hotel's room service menu, a trip to Italy, a helicopter ride, and though she said there was a "personal connection" to the film, she denied it was an autobiography.

[7] Coppola said that she thought of Dorff to play Marco early while writing the film, because he had an aura of "the bad-boy actor," but also "this really sweet, sincere side.

"[7] For the visual style she discussed Bruce Weber's Hollywood portraits and Helmut Newton's photographs of models at the Chateau Marmont, and Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), a film by Chantal Akerman about the routine of a Belgian housewife, with Harris Savides, the cinematographer.

[6] Before filming began Dorff, Fanning, and Lala Sloatman (who plays Marco's ex-wife) improvised meals and fights to understand the family's dynamic.

[10] In a feature for The New York Times website, Coppola discussed making the scene when Marco visits a special effects studio.

She said she initially was unsure of how to approach it, but Savides did a long, slow zoom which captures his breathing and creates a sense of claustrophobia.

Its average per screen, £2,026, was higher than Coppola's earlier small film openings, Marie Antoinette (2006) and The Virgin Suicides (1999).

The critical consensus states: "It covers familiar territory for Sofia Coppola, but Somewhere remains a hypnotic, seductively pensive meditation on the nature of celebrity, anchored by charming performances from Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning".

[25] Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, awarded the film four out of four stars and praised the detail in the portrait of Johnny Marco, saying "Coppola is a fascinating director.

Scott in The New York Times called the film "exquisite, melancholy and formally audacious" and said "This is not a matter of imitation, but rather of mastery, of finding — by borrowing if necessary — a visual vocabulary suited to the story and its environment.

Coppola's films, it said, deal with "the delicate irony of the delinquency of a universe of the happy few", which is both to her credit and a ghost which haunts her, a loyalty ensnaring her.

Lost in Translation (2003) depicts an encounter and brief friendship between two lonely Americans in a luxurious Tokyo hotel; Marie Antoinette (2006), a stylized biopic of the eponymous queen, examined her loneliness.

[3] The film's opening shot, a Ferrari circling a race-track in and out of a stationary camera position, its whine and roar rising and falling, establishes the theme of ennui.

Ebert speculates that she probably understands the reasons for the split better than he, and wonders why the child must suffer his hedonism and "detached attempts at fatherhood".

[3] In some ways Cleo—having grown up inside the Hollywood bubble—mothers her father, cooking for him and being more worldly aware, but she also watches him with the wide-eyed adoration of a child.

[26] Coppola comes from a family of filmmakers and actors, and she has said how childhood memories of living in hotels partially inspired her choice of setting.

While celebrity gossip websites inform us of the shallowness of much of "star life", Coppola's feature differs in its emotional depth.

Instead he is shown giving interviews, being photographed, attending an awards ceremony in Italy, and having special effects make-up applied.

[45] Marco is obliged to use his "star" recognition to help promote his new film, and when his publicist calls he becomes passive and mechanically takes the arranged chauffeured car and speaks to the press.