Somewhere

It’s rather regrettable, but I rarely go to the cinema anymore, especially not to see brand new films, so I guess I’ve become estranged from the segment of population to whom film posters are aimed at.
Yet, the poster for Somewhere has really got me. I know nothing about the movie, only that is directed by Sofia Coppola, a lady with a hell of a last name who had written and directed Lost in Translation, which I had enjoyed watching at the time (so I’m admitting an initially positive bias).
However, I guess it is all of the inspiring questions that the poster puts forward what has been the bait I’ve bitten.

Usually, film posters present a clear range of expectations about the films they advertise, certainly their genre and often even a sketch of their plots. They typically offer questions for the ‘reader’ of the poster to guess in a quite easy way.
But the poster for Somewhere, I would say, poses questions with unsure answers: what is the relation between the two characters? Have they just met? Where is that location? And when is that? Is that a dystopian scenario à la Ballard’s ‘Drowned World’? Are they in their own dream? Are they maybe in my dream? Ultimately, am I losing the grip of myself?

So I’d say that the poster’s appeal is more about what it hides than what it shows, more about what is uncertain and open to (my) speculations than about what is dully evident: there, something is happening to someone at some point somewhere…, but where, when, who, what? It is –I think while inhaling deeply from my joint– as if it spoke of some unspeakable depths I should hear about.

I’m afraid, though, that in the end I won’t go to see the film, as I’m one who lives in fear of utter disappointment.

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Focus Features International: Somewhere
Euston Station (LU)
London