Somewhere

Ends Thursday, April 14. The “somewhere” in the title can be located, temporarily at least, in several ways—it’s “nowhere,” it’s Los Angeles and the movies, it’s “Hollywoodland” (or what’s left of it, at the present time), and it’s also where the story’s chief character, a vaguely burnt-out movie star played by Stephen Dorff, may be headed at the end of the action. And since that story revolves in part around the actor’s small daughter (Elle Fanning) coming to stay with him for a brief time (home is a room at the faux-palatial Chateau Marmont), it’s about the near impossibility of growing up in the extravagantly infantilized glitz of Southern California’s movie industry. Adroitly directed by Sofia Coppola (who presumably knows all too exactly whereof she speaks), Somewhere might also be viewed as a very smart American variation on the “Antoniennui” of Italian cinema in the 1960s. Regardless, the film is a fascinatingly pertinent meditation on the dubious rewards and creature comforts of la dolce vita as currently practiced in the soothing light of Hollywood-style wish fulfillment. Pageant Theatre. Rated R