52 Films by Women Vol 5. 36. ON THE ROCKS (Director: Sofia Coppola)
In Sofia Coppola’s seventh film, the New York-based comedy-drama, On the Rocks , the writer-director is reteamed with her male muse, Bill Murray. Murray is the father Coppola never had, great with kids in small doses if this film is anything to go by but incapable of marital fidelity. Coppola’s actual father, Francis Coppola, the director of three Godfather movies as well as of Apocalypse Now and The Conversation , has been married to Eleanor for 57 years, so clearly this film is not autobiographical. Coppola apparently put some of her father’s somewhat outrageous opinions into the mouth of art dealer Felix Keane, played with relaxed é lan by Murray. You find yourself asking: ‘did he really know a tribe of women in Canada who kidnapped men and placated them by having sex?’ ‘That sounds like your fantasy,’ blocked novelist daughter, Laura (Rashida Jones) tells him. On the Rocks is what some people call a ‘low stakes’ drama, by which is meant that there’s barely any drama at all...