On the Rocks
Funny and sweet new film by Sofia Coppola in which Bill Murray plays an eccentric father who helps his daughter research her husband’s possible adultery in nightly New York.
Laura is married to businessman Dean and together with their children they live in New York. Their lives, however, couldn’t be any more different. While Dean is constantly on business trips and visiting parties, Laura is mainly structuring her and her children’s lives and scheduling things. Besides, she suspects Dean of extramarital affairs. In other words: she’s stuck. One day she gets in touch again with her charismatic yet impulsive father Felix. Together they start on an adventure through nocturnal New York, trying to find out the truth about Dean.
Mark Twain once wrote ‘write what you know’ and Sofia Coppola, who is among other things director Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, does exactly that. Her films are full of dysfunctional families (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES), remarkable father figures (LOST IN TRANSLATION) and bored upper-class people looking for a new life (MARIE ANTOINETTE). Her new film ticks all these boxes, yet it’s due to Coppola’s excellent feeling for humour and melancholy that ON THE ROCKS once again works. Besides that, there’s Bill Murray, as always dry like a martini, who visibly feels at home in his role asa free but sweet spirit.