An Ode to Sofia Coppola: Perspectives, Visuals, and Fashion
Sofia Coppola is one of the only directors who captures girlhood so effectively. Coppola’s unique perspective on girlhood, utilizing visuals to tell a story in her films, makes her work captivating. In honor of her released archive book and new film Priscilla, here are 3 reasons we love Sofia Coppola.
1. Stories Focused on Female Perspective
There is a lack of female-centered stories in the film industry. Even more so, there is a lack of prominent female directors. Sofia Coppola is one of the few female directors who creatively expresses her unique perspective in the film world and is able to be heard.
While she has a huge advantage due to her family and the way she grew up, she’s been a leading role model for other female directors. Her films often focus on young girls or women, and she sets out to portray them authentically, in ways that can’t fully exist in films directed by men.
“Coming-of-age girls are Sofia’s specialist subject,” says i-D Magazine’s Billie Brand. “[The girls] may be beautiful on the outside, but beneath their glossy surface they’re all longing and searching for something to complete them.”
Coppola gives the spotlight to girls’ feelings and emotions, whereas in traditional media, girls are often represented in a different light.
Cailee Spaeny, who plays Priscilla Presley in Coppola’s newest film, Priscilla, says that Coppola “gives young women permission to have a whole range of emotions and wants and needs—to feel deep sadness and to yearn for things.” She continues to say, “They’re complicated people, often depicted wildly wrong in film and television.”
Coppola’s unique style focusing on young women encapsulates their full personalities in a way no other director has done.
Priscilla Presley felt that Coppola was the only person who could tell her story the way she wanted.
“I just got who she was and I felt that she could get me,” she says in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
2. Focus on Emotions and Visuals Over a Plot and Dialogue
Coppola’s distinct style subverts dialogue, opting for the power of visuals to convey the emotions of the characters. A common theme in her work is the feeling of loneliness in female characters. Rather than these characters voicing this feeling, she puts them in large settings where she emphasizes how small they are.
The lack of words speaks for them. She creates a broken feeling with these shots and shows harmony on the screen when two characters with a strong relationship are together.
“I’m most interested in characters in transition and how people can be motivated to change, not from some big outside disaster or being held hostage, but just some little moment in life that’s not a big deal,” says Coppola in an interview with Artforum.
“I feel like in life those are the things that make you look at yourself and change,”
“One of Coppola’s biggest talents is knowing when not to attempt to explain the inscrutable moments of life—she allows them to just be,” says Screencraft’s Shanee Edwards.
Coppola uses long, drawn-out shots and natural lighting to evoke a “dreamlike” feeling. She studied photography in school and cites photographs as her inspiration when shooting. The emphasis on visuals is prominent in Coppola’s mind, even in the early stages of writing.
“I tape photographs right into the script, so when we’re shooting I have direct visual references,” Coppola says in an interview with Aperture. “Whenever I start writing, I think about the color palette and the way it looks.”
“She has a decided predilection for showing empty moments in human lives and deals with characters who continually expose the void within themselves,” says Anna Rogers in Senses of Cinema.
Coppola’s visual storytelling is what makes her films intriguing and unique. She is able to transcend past a heavy dialogue script and use visual tools to convey feelings.
Her films feel so real because we see her characters acting like people do in real life; not narrating their every thought, but experiencing their emotions in silence.
3. Love For Fashion Translates Into the Costumes
Fashion has always played a large role in Sofia’s life and her love for clothes is evident in her films.
“Even as a little kid, I was interested in what people were wearing,” Coppola tells W Magazine.
With a focus on visuals, comes the importance of costuming. In order to fully conceptualize her vision, Coppola has worked with talented costume designers including Milena Canonero, who won an Academy Award for her work in Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
“It is the silks, frills, florals, and candy-like fashion that represent the otherworldly opulence of Marie Antoinette,” says Anastasia Brown in her article published on Medium. “Whether this be in the sets or costuming, Coppola has chosen to exert her womanhood into her projects.”
Coppola continues to tell the stories of her characters with fashion. As her characters go through emotional turmoil, we see their outfits reflect that.
For example, in her debut film, The Virgin Suicides, the Lisbon sisters are trapped from exploring 70s fashion by their strict Catholic parents. Even in their “imprisonment,” we see the second youngest, Lux, explore her blossoming sexuality through clothing.
Viewers see Lux at the dinner table wearing a spaghetti strap top until her parents force her to put on a sweater, all while rubbing her foot up and down a boy’s leg at dinner.
When she is wearing a boxy t-shirt, we see it slide off her shoulder for a moment.
She is the only one of her sisters tanning in a bikini in their front yard. Even her undergarments, only known to the audience by the x-ray zoom, are adorned with her crush's name and a heart.
Coppola’s love of fashion is seen in her relationship with designers. She interned at Chanel as a teenager, fetching Karl Lagerfeld’s coffee. She also has a legendary relationship with Marc Jacobs. He has expressed that she is his ultimate muse.
“She represented everything I am drawn to—talent, style, creativity, a unique ‘vision, and voice’. She had then and has now an interest in fashion not as an art but rather part of the ‘art of living’,” Jacobs says in a Dazed article.
“From that point of my life and to this day, I am so deeply inspired by that time in my life. Meeting Sofia…”
Coppola’s costumes are known to be consistent in their feel, not necessarily their style. In her film, The Beguiled, Coppola worked with stylist Stacey Battat, who also worked on other Coppola films such as The Bling Ring and Somewhere.
“When I first thought about it, it reminded me of Virgin Suicides and the prom dresses that they wore,” Coppola says on envisioning the costumes for The Beguiled. “The pastels that they wore all related to one another.”
Even though it was a period piece, Coppola says “it was important that it was accurate, but Stacey is so good at contemporary clothes—I wanted the edit of what we picked from history to appeal to a modern eye.”
The elaborate and detailed costuming in Coppola’s films enhances her portrayal of women in film. She gives her characters the freedom to express themselves visually, in both their actions and their clothing
Coppola’s work is artistic and visually thematic. It represents a demography that has never been so meticulously captured in film. Her unique style and point of view are those of a great auteur.
With Priscilla making its way to theaters, viewers are in for a visual and emblematic treat.
What do you love about Sofia Coppola? Let us know in the comments!