Sofia Coppola Ranked
An evolving retrospective on the films of Sofia Coppola, from ‘The Virgin Suicides’ to ‘Priscilla.’
It’s the longing that does it for me. Sofia Coppola’s films ooze it.
From that first time Kirsten Dunst as Lux Lisbon appears on screen, lollipop in her mouth, I myself crushing, longing along with the male protagonists of her first, and best, feature The Virgin Suicides to her latest effort Priscilla, hearkening back to the lavish isolation of her own Marie-Antoinette, she seems to understand the human, specifically female, desire for more, knowing that there will always be something we feel we need that is just beyond our grasp.
Ms. Coppola is an auteur in the truest sense of the term.
Her characters hang together, downtrodden, caught in some sort of limbo under some ruthless, but beautiful, influence (i.e., a teen heartthrob, an aging movie star, a French palace and its spoils, your daughter, a hot klepto, a sworn enemy, your philandering father, and Elvis).
She tends to like punishing Kirsten Dunst. She places wonderful, often anachronistic needle drops and experimental scores by groups like Air and Phoenix, amongst the lace-sheered rooms, detailed with the artifacts of feminine beauty or the blank, spare spaces of her characters’…
