On the Rocks

Seventeen years after their inspired collaboration on Lost In Translation (2003), Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray reteam for the infinitely lighter, smaller, but by no means trivial new film On The Rocks. As in most of her pictures, Coppola explores the ennui and disaffection unique to the privileged classes via a restrained minimalist approach. This time, however, she’s written herself a narrative that in other hands would play as a zany, overly broad comedy. Rashida Jones (The Social Network, Our Idiot Brother, Celeste and Jesse Forever) plays Laura, a successful New York writer who lives with her handsome, technology entrepreneur husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans), and their two young daughters in a swanky SoHo loft adorned with stickers signaling support for politicians like Bernie Sanders and Stacy Abrams. Laura isn’t feeling good about herself. Could it be the dichotomy between her lifestyle and her political views? Is it that her young daughters are zapping all her energy? Does she feel pressure for taking an advance on a book she hasn’t started writing yet? Or have she and Dean hit the seven-year-itch phase of their marriage? Maybe all of the above.

Enter her father, Felix (Murray playing a cheerful variant of his usual lovable cad persona). Felix is a well-heeled individual—a divorced art dealer with multiple homes, a chauffeur, and a winning personality that endears him to women of all stripes despite his age, thinning hair, and noticeable paunch. When Laura confesses to her father that she suspects her husband might be cheating on her, Felix convinces her to join him in a father-daughter detective adventure to get to the bottom of what Dean might be up to. Their escapade involves a car chase through the streets of Manhattan, a spur-of-the-moment trip to Mexico, and lots of downtime where they sip cocktails and engage in polite but pointed conversation. The set pieces are where a different version of this film would go for big laughs, but Coppola is interested in observing behavior not mining it for humor. As Laura wrestles with her father’s old-school attitudes and the charming, effortless ways he wields his privilege and justifies his actions, she must take a deep look at herself as well.

Coppola, forever known as a child of affluence from a celebrated cinematic dynasty, is able to pull off the self-analysis that seems baked into this film without it ever coming off as pretentious, self-pitying, or self-aggrandizing. This is perhaps in part because, while her lens seems narrowly focus on a certain type of wealthy liberal elite, the conclusions we draw from this picture seem applicable to all individuals of America’s dominant caste. And Murray, who can makes even the most bitter of pills go down smoothly as a bonbon, endears us to Felix not only via the legendary comedic actors usual bag of tricks, but also with an awareness of his age and impermanence. While Felix is in no way an enfeebled character, spending time with him is almost like witnessing elements of an era that seemed like it would be with us forever slowly beginning to fade away.