Sofia Coppola

Abstract

Sofia Coppola is currently one of the most discussed female filmmakers in Hollywood and one of the most prominent “indie” directors working over the last decade. Coppola has also divided critics, especially with her third and fourth features, Marie Antoinette and Somewhere both drawing heavy criticism. This article draws on a range of popular and scholarly sources in order to chart the different narratives that construct Coppola's public image, including the style of her filmmaking. I focus on perspectives of Coppola's work, investigating how the director's biographical details have become bound up with the reception of her films in ways that dismiss her films as too preoccupied with frivolity and privilege. Coppola's important position as a female director of independent features, specifically her unique position as a successful woman working in the masculinized arena of independent Hollywood, and her place within a lineage of women's cinema, is frequently elided in discussions of her success and style. It is the question of Coppola's status as a female director, the ambivalent process by which this status is acknowledged and disavowed in the reception of her work, that is most compelling for feminist film theory.