On the Rocks: Bill Murray and director Sofia Coppola still in sweet sync, 17 years after Lost in Translation
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A
Writer/director Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks is a little bit of joy, an easy-going New York comedy about a daughter and her eccentric father.
Rashida Jones is Laura, an author with a book deal and a blank page staring back at her. She’s also a married mother of two young girls, living in a beautiful apartment in Manhattan.
Bill Murray and Rashida Jones rekindle their father-daughter relationship in On the Rocks.
Her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) has a new business that is taking off, which means he’s constantly running out to have meetings, or traveling for business, often with a very attractive colleague. Compared to shuttling the kids to and from school, it looks pretty glamourous.
The marriage has fallen into a groove, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even though Dean seems preoccupied with work, he’s always checking in, asking her how the book is coming along. When she says not well, he says encouraging, if clichéd things, but isn’t negative or judge-y.
Is he just being gentle with her? Or is he actually disinterested?
On top of it, Laura, with the routine of the kids and the writer’s inertia, seems a little depressed and feels she’s become a bore. And so when her semi-retired, art dealer bon-vivant father Felix (Bill Murray) swoops back into town from some kind of frolic in Paris, she’s open to his shenanigans.
Felix is a trip: the kind of man who knows every fabulous place to have dinner, flirts with the waitresses, and knows a few phrases in multiple languages.
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He’s also full bits of knowledge and odd facts - maybe true, maybe made up, it doesn’t really matter. They hint at a man who’s lived a large life.
Felix adores Laura, calling her “Shorty,” and coaxing her out last minute for cocktails and dinners at wonderful New York restaurants just because.
There’s an easy and affectionate banter between the two of them that borders on a kind of shtick, where the low key, calm Laura plays straight man to her eccentric father and to his antiquated ideas about women, withrandom musings like “Women, you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. But that doesn’t mean you have to live with them.” Laura scolds him, but adores him back. Their chemistry is undeniable.
So when Laura starts to wonder whether Dean is cheating on her, Felix doesn’t miss a beat. He insists they investigate in the ages old way, by tailing him. Laura isn’t sure. She’s not a neurotic or prone to panic. But, her dad has a way of convincing her, and she goes along for the ride. Whatever Dean is doing is revealed in time, but the fun of this is the easy-going relationship between these two.
On the Rocks is a light comedy filtered through the lens of writer/director Sofia Coppola. By which I mean it’s smart, gentle and sweet. Coppola is a minimalist by nature. And although this is the most distinctly comedic film she’s ever done, it still has a quiet grounded center to it, which to me, is a hallmark of all of her films.
There are few directors who give you a sense of the inner life of women the way she does. Her female characters don’t flail around shrieking about their problems, (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Instead, she gives them more complexity, less dialogue, casts well, and then leaves room in the film for her actors to show us that there’s more going on inside the character.
In that way, she couldn’t ask for a better collaborator than Rashida Jones, who gives a patient, grounded performance as the soulful Laura. Laura’s married and a mom, but still a person working through her own challenges. As well, the chemistry between her and Bill Murray is note perfect.
On the Rocks marks the first feature film reunion of Coppola and Murray since 2003’s sublime, Lost in Translation, a movie that was somewhat of a turning point for both of their careers.
In that film Coppola cast Murray in a rich role, where he wasn’t asked to use any of his usual comic tropes. That gave him room to reveal himself as an actor capable of creating characters of significant depth. Their creative synergy continues to work here.
On the Rocks is a delight.
On the Rocks is in theatres October 2nd, and then on Apple TV+ on October 23.