Sofia Coppola names the turning point of her career: “I just tried different things”
In a cinematic landscape dominated by male directors, Sofia Coppola has helped to pave the way for more female filmmakers, making overtly feminine films that cater to an audience that is so often underrepresented. Her preoccupation with female adolescence, the struggles of coming-of-age, and loneliness have resonated with many young women across the globe since she began making movies in the late 1990s.
While her family ties (her father is Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather) have undeniably helped her to get a foot in the door, her cinematic style has always remained idiosyncratic and creative. She has garnered dedicated fans due to her exploration of femininity and girlhood, allowing viewers to revel in ultra-feminine aesthetics, which are often frowned upon by wider patriarchal society as trivial and unserious.
When she released Marie Antoinette, for example, the sugary sweet visuals – used to emphasise the character’s young age and naiveté as a teenage queen – were criticised by many male viewers, who believed the film lacked substance. Yet, that’s not the case at all; Coppola’s movies take a complex look at the nuances of being a woman, from the pressures of performing a certain way, to the ever-presence of the male gaze.
Coppola didn’t fall into directing straight away, though. After her disastrous performance in The Godfather Part III, she spent the 1990s indulging in various artistic pursuits. “It took me a while; I just tried different things. I moved away from home, went to college, and even started my own clothing company that had partners in Japan,” she told The Talks.
She modelled, appeared in various music videos – including one by Sonic Youth – started a clothing line called Milk Fed, and pursued photography. She even presented a television show, Hi Octane, which she created with her friend Zoe Cassavettes (whose dad also happened to be a famous director – John Cassavettes). Yet, none of these endeavours were truly fulfilling.
“Once I made my first short film I just knew. And finding the book The Virgin Suicides was the turning point actually because I loved that book and felt protective over it,” she explained. In 1998 she made Lick the Star, a black-and-white short about school popularity and hierarchy, where several of the girls plan on killing the boys at their school with rat poison. Yet, it seems as though her discovery of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides cemented her desire to be a filmmaker even further.
The novel, published in 1993, was recommended to Coppola by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and she instantly fell in love with it. It tells the tale of the Lisbon sisters, who are increasingly subjected to their parents’ strict rules following the suicide of one of the siblings. It’s a tale of male oppression and the weight of societal pressures and traditionalism on young girls, told from the perspective of one of the neighbourhood boys who, years later, still can’t shake the girls from his mind.
Coppola’s movie adaptation gives the girls even more autonomy than the book, honing in on their private lives and painting them as ambitious and fun girls whose personalities and lust for life are slowly stripped away from them. The filmmaker crafted the girls’ spaces, like the bathroom and the bedrooms, with minute detail, capturing the inner worlds of the sisters through props and set design.
The Virgin Suicides remains immensely popular with young girls and women today due to its sheer beauty; Coppola perfectly understood what it’s like to be a girl. She then went on the direct Lost in Translation, which earned her an Oscar for ‘Best Original Screenplay’.
