Sophia Coppola's On the Rocks is a breezy but effective work, a film that manages to demonstrate the pervasiveness of self-doubt through a congenial tone that never feels particularly high-stakes. Perhaps this is due in part to the simple fact that the characters it profiles come from a place of elevated status, class, and privilege, but I think such a statement does ignore what the film is capable of accomplishing. The narrative revolves around the plight of an upper-crust Manhattanite who begins to suspect her husband may be cheating on her. While one does find themselves rooting for and caring for this woman, I couldn't help but notice how much On the Rocks perfectly aligns with Apple+'s highly affluent brand aspiration, a film which in a sense feels insignificant due to the state of the world. Buoyed heavily by Bill Murray's infectious performance as a flamboyant elder bachelor and father to our principal character, On the Rocks wields a film grammar rooted in repetition, elucidating the mundanity of domestication for this once proud novelist who now finds herself stuck-in-a-rut, effectively forced into the caregiver role due to the normalization of strict-gender roles in a patriarchal society. The strength of this film lies in this juxtaposition between our principal character and her misogynist father, one which slowly reveals how their relationship bolsters her insecurity and sense of self-doubt and her marital status. His myopic and binary perspective on gender roles infuses his younger daughter with a host of insecurities, blinding, and disrupting the sense of trust she had originally built up with her husband. The film is playful and breezy while touching on some interesting thematic ideas, yet I couldn't help but wonder how much more pointed and effective the film would have been if POV was completely flipped to that of the husband, played by Damon Wayans, a character whom one can implicitly surmise didn't come from money, whose perceived despondence as of late ends up being due to his desire to impress his privileged wife with his company's success, given her successful, upscale family.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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