With quarantine’s firm grasp on New York City, it feels like a miracle to see the city bustle with life and normalcy in Sofia Coppola’s newest film, On the Rocks. Laura (Rashida Jones) is a woman stuck in a rut — both in her married life and her career — who begins to suspect her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) of infidelity, thanks to the seeds of paranoia planted by her father Felix (Bill Murray). Laura and Felix travel all through New York and beyond looking for answers, Laura at every turn doubting her father’s wild ideas and theories. With On the Rocks, Coppola captures unpredictable New York nights reminiscent of simpler times and a profound statement on love — as Felix lays out, “We all just want to be loved.”
Coppola’s direction is strong as usual: basking in the quieter moments and reveling in melancholy, filming every sad silence with a unique, soft touch. Jones imbues Laura with an engaging nuance, playing her with an undeniable warmth. Every smile — and eventually every tear — feels genuine and kind, so much so that when the cracks form and the fragility bursts it’s heartbreaking to watch. A single tear falling into a martini glass sounds silly on paper, but Jones’ performance — mixed with Coppola’s excellent understanding of her characters — gives it real tragedy. Murray’s Felix is infectious and often hilarious, in only the way that Murray could play: the grandpa hitting on every woman he sees while brimming with his own eccentricities feels almost too perfect for him.
All of Coppola’s films care deeply about the aches and pains of women. Her work with Kirsten Dunst, especially in The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Marie Antoinette (2006), focuses on feminine youth, the kind of dissatisfaction teen girls face when they’re so close to reaching their own freedom yet still remain shackled by inexperience and patriarchy. On the Rocks opens with a black screen and Felix’s voice explaining to a young Laura that she is his property until she is married, and even then she is still his. It’s a frightening declaration, one that would make the audience think this would be a story about the teenage desire to rebel. Instead, Coppola chooses to capture the longing to be loved one feels later in life, the desire for someone to love you just as much as you were loved years before.
Laura and Felix desire attention from others on the basis of age, seeing maturity as the waning of desire. Laura fears her husband’s infidelity. Furthermore, she does not see it as a failing on his part but on hers; that she’s too boring, stagnant, dull, average to be loved. Living life as a typical housewife who’s too stuck to work during the day but too exhausted to work at night, Laura is afraid of loneliness. She vocalizes that she’s specifically afraid of being “boring;” Felix seems to have the same issue, pushing forth his oddities and extensive theories about human nature and history to seem more interesting. He weasels his way out of a speeding ticket and has little spies working to uncover if Dean is having an affair all to spend time with his daughter, who he fears he’s losing the love of. It’s not about the possession of others in a masculine, domineering way. Instead, it’s knowing the ways in which you love and are loved in return.
This seems to be Coppola’s own admission, fearing that she herself has lost the adoration of others. An article by Joey Nolfi for Entertainment Weekly mentioned during filming of On the Rocks that she had a near breakdown about Murray’s inclusion in the film. She feared that this would inevitably be compared to Lost in Translation (2003) — her other main collaboration with Murray — and that she could never live up to the critical success of that film. This feels like a mature Coppola, afraid of being stagnant and losing the public’s interest, and it certainly feels like the third time she’s used the character dynamic of a (surrogate) father-daughter relationship to have a breezy, comedic adventure (2010’s Somewhere fits into this category, and in my opinion is even better than Translation). This time, however, the ages have changed, and our daughter is older. And despite all the laughs the film brings, it’s hard not to tear up at that very real fear of maturation degrading your relationships. In a society where youth is valued, it’s bold of Coppola to tackle the longing of love we often seek, regardless and sometimes especially because of age.
