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VENICE (Reuters) – Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” an insider’s look at the life of a Hollywood actor who becomes numb to life through drink, drugs and a string of one-night stands, won the top prize at the Venice film festival on Saturday. The choice of the U.S. director’s movie for the Golden Lion award will come as a surprise on the Lido waterfront, where reaction to the Los Angeles-based drama was mixed. Coppola tells the story of Johnny Marco, an up-and-coming star whose days are divided between five-stars hotels, Ferraris and blonde pin-ups, but also loneliness, tiresome media attention and boredom. Marco, played by Stephen Dorff, is finally faced with the question of where a life so enviable on the surface is ultimately heading when his 11-year-old daughter unexpectedly comes to stay with him. The daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola, and an Oscar winner for her screenplay of “Lost in Translation,” partly based the film on her own experiences as a young girl following her famous father from one hotel to another. “Thanks to my Dad for teaching me,” she said at the awards ceremony. The director award went to Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia for “Balada Triste de Trompeta” (The Last Circus), a horror film doubling as a metaphor for fascist Spain that split critics. PRIZES FOR PALS? Vincent Gallo won the best actor prize for his performance in “Essential Killing,” where he plays a suspected Taliban fighter on the run from U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Europe. Gallo, who does not utter a word in the film and has spent his time in Venice escaping paparazzi and wearing a balaclava to hide his face, did not take the stage to accept the award. “Vincent, come on, are you here?” Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski said as he received the prize in Gallo’s place. Ariane Labed won the best actress prize for Greek father-daughter drama “Attenberg,” while Monte Hellman scooped a special career award. He was in Venice with “Road to Nowhere.” The awards, which bring the curtain down on the 67th edition of the world’s oldest film festival, are likely to fuel controversy. Italian media have questioned whether jury president Quentin Tarantino, who is a close friend of Coppola as well as Hellman, would be influenced by a conflict of interest in his choices for the prizes. Tarantino squarely rejected suggestions of favoritism. “I wasn’t going to let anything like that affect me at all. I was just going to literally respond to the film. There was no me steering any direction. “Sofia doesn’t know these other people (on the jury) and she won it fair and square in a completely unanimous vote,” he said. The 24-strong competition lineup, featuring the youngest group of directors in memory, had been seen by critics as strong and varied, providing everything from French comedy to Polish existential minimalism to effects-heavy Chinese costume drama. But unlike 2009, when the hard-hitting war movie “Lebanon” was a popular winner, and 2008, when “The Wrestler” launched the surprise comeback of Hollywood outsider Mickey Rourke, this year lacked a defining moment that unites audiences. Among those shunned by the seven-member jury was Natalie Portman, praised for her powerful turn as a disturbed dancer in “Black Swan.” Also popular with critics were “Venus Noire,” the true story of a woman brought from South Africa to Europe in 1810 and turned into a freak show, and Chile’s “Post Mortem,” which looks at the 1973 military coup through the eyes of a morgue employee. (Editing by Michael Roddy) Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

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Somewhere — Film Review By Deborah Young, September 03, 2010 03:11 ET “Somewhere” Bottom Line: Sofia Coppola makes a charming return to small-scale storytelling. After her foray into historical costumers with “Marie Antoinette,” Sofia Coppola makes a happy return to “Lost in Translation” territory in the cutback charmer “Somewhere,” which illuminates the emptiness of a movie star’s life in Los Angeles through close observation and gentle irony. Despite its subject, Coppola seems to be exercising more of her European than American sensibility in the small-scale intimacy of this portrait. Lacking the stars of “Translation,” it might not go quite as far with audiences but still can count on a strong critical push. Again shooting from her own original screenplay, Coppola stays close to the details and innuendoes of the story, making every shot count. With lots of fixed-frame shots and occasionally playing out scenes in real time, the film has a relaxed indie rhythm and laid-back style that mimics the way young Hollywood actor Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) coasts through life. He is introduced in a daringly long, monotonous opening shot as he drives his noisy Ferrari in circles on an empty track in the desert. The meaninglessness of this activity, from which he emerges a little dazed, is typical of everything he does: falling down the stairs high and breaking an arm, having sex with a stream of interchangeable blondes, living on a diet of beer and cigarettes, constant parties and more girls. With sardonic humor, sex is shown as putting Johnny to sleep or as a quick, meaningless physical workout. His venomous ex-girlfriends think he’s a shallow jerk. But Johnny, in Dorff’s easygoing, slightly anonymous interpretation, actually is a nice guy. He doesn’t even realize how lost he is until his ex-wife leaves town and forces him to spend several days in the company of his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning). Although he never has developed any fathering skills, Johnny manages to show her a good time on a trip to Milan for the Telegatto Awards, a send-up of Italian TV glitz. He still wakes up with a blonde in his bed (Italo starlet Laura Chiatti on this occasion), raising Cleo’s eyebrows, but the foreign country brings them closer.   Much of what works in “Somewhere” is subtle and glancing, like the unemphasized comparison of fresh, natural Cleo to Johnny’s jaded lovers. In two delightful scenes, repeated perhaps to show the unimaginative nature of his sexual fantasies, pole-dancing twins (Kristina and Karissa Shannon) appear in his hotel room performing to disco tunes. Not long afterward, Cleo performs an ice-skating routine to music in an equally succinct costume as her father looks on admiringly. Johnny’s stumbling effort to assume a father’s role with Cleo is the first step to breaking out of his celebrity torpor. Scene by scene, a bond builds between them, eventually bringing Johnny to the Big Question, first posed at a farcical news conference: Who is he? An upbeat final scene gives hope he’s looking for an answer. Dorff has the body and looks to play the hunky star as well as the humility to erase most traces of personality for the bland role, which sometimes requires just smoking a cigarette from start to finish. Young Fanning, who already is a veteran actress, gives Cleo poise and lots of skills — cooking, skating — that help mask her emotional fragility. In the part of Johnny’s longtime buddy, Chris Pontius (“Jackass”) has the naturalness with Cleo he badly lacks. Los Angeles is “Somewhere’s” Tokyo, and the city plays a principal role in the film. The iconic Chateau Marmont, with its singing waiter Romolo and duplex suites, plays a major part as Johnny’s impersonal home and refuge. L.A.’s interminable roads and freeways also figure prominently, accompanied by the roar of the Ferrari, imprisoned in traffic and always driving placidly down the middle lane.

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