Director’s Voice: Sophia Coppella

I watched three movies by Sophia Coppella: Marie Antoinette, The Bling Ring, and The Virgin Suicides. After watching them, I think I can say that I’m not a huge fan of her work. Her style is very unconventional in that it doesn’t follow the same structure as typical western stories.

In the listed three movies, the plot has an inciting action at the very beginning, and the overall energy of the story stays pretty consistently low until almost the end. Even the seemingly important moments don’t feel much more serious that the other moments. I think this partially has to do with the use of music. The use of music is pretty strange; in Marie Antoinette, the soundtrack ranged from classical to pop rock; in The Bling Ring, music played during the club scenes but it was silent when the characters were stealing, which I think partially took away from the importance of those moments. On the other hand, the stealing scenes were quite stressful to watch BECAUSE of the lack of instrumentation.

There is almost no character development. Marie Antoinette doesn’t change much as a person aside from learning to act more French. The girls in The Bling Ring were pretty messed up people since the beginning and stay messed up until the end; the guy started off okay, changed for the worse, and perhaps learned his lesson but got no way to really redeem himself. Basically, there was no closure to their relationships. In The Virgin Suicides, the sisters don’t change very much personality-wise. The boys across the street change a bit since their interest in the girls heighten.


The camera cuts at strange times like in the middle of a party to an unrelated event or action. Also, the films end quite suddenly before the audience get a good explanation for the events that took place or satisfying closure. Because of the lack of character development, the weird cuts, and lack of closure, it feels like the movies aren’t as much stories as they are snapshots of life. None of the three movies left me feeling satisfied, and I was rather confused. But perhaps that is Sophia Coppella’s intent and I’m just too stupid to understand.

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