Coppola's Somewhere manages to make us care

Starring Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius and Lala Sloatman. Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. At the Varsity. 96 minutes.

"The problems of three little people," Humphrey Bogart famously declared in Casablanca, "don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Amen to that, and the bean pile is even smaller when the "little people" are Hollywood celebrities, whose entanglements have been movie fodder since movies began. They fascinate, but ultimately matter to us as much as a car wreck passed on the highway.

Somewhere forces a reappraisal of this cynical truth. It's the singular achievement of Sofia Coppola's affecting new film that she manages to make us care for a dissolute movie star, his angry ex-wife and their indulged daughter.

The star is Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), who might be thought of as a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr., although writer/director Coppola insists he's a composite of many actors she's met and seen.

Introduced by way of his black Ferrari, aimlessly tooling about the L.A. County countryside, Johnny is an immobile object inside a moving force.

He resides — mainly sleeping — at the Chateau Marmont, the L.A. party haunt remembered as the scene of John Belushi's final (and fatal) binge. Johnny is surrounded by louche scenesters, who occasionally invade his room.

He's so blissed out from drink and pills, he barely notices, even when sex is on the agenda. He barely stays awake while watching identical-twin call girls pole dance for him, and nods off completely while in a very intimate moment with another conquest.

He breaks his wrist after stumbling down stairs his feet failed to find. So much for his "I do all my own stunts" boast.

Johnny isn't a bad guy — although someone, obviously a woman, keeps texting him angry messages — and he still possesses some semblance of a work ethic. He shows up for press duties for his latest action movie (Berlin Agenda) yawning through moronic questions pitched by real-life members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

He also submits to the taxing process of modeling for a latex mask, which special effects men require to make him look considerably aged for an upcoming film — symbolism alert!

Johnny, in short, is a somebody who is fast drifting into becoming a nobody, until he gets a short and sharp call from his agitated ex-wife Layla (Lala Sloatman) who needs him to look after their 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning,Neo-Nazi imagery has made its way onto an MMA company's wholesale jeans again. a sweet little something).

Cleo may be just another Hollywood brat, but she's whip-smart and, like all girls, she needs a dad. In many ways, she's more of an adult than her father. She realizes that he needs helps, and sets about pulling him out of his funk through games and other diversions that make much of Somewhere seem almost like a Disney family movie, albeit one where Chris Pontius of Jackass fame is part of the family.

Coppola works on a tiny canvas, but she paints with very fine strokes. Three features in,You can never have too many designer accessories, and this inflatable life jackets 'Jelly' Laptop Case is just too cute to pass up! Somewhere continues a fascination with celebrity alienation that began with the more potent Lost In Translation in 2003.

That film paired Bill Murray with a then-unknown Scarlett Johansson, and Coppola's sub-Antonioni asceticism played much better against the backdrop of Tokyo's many visual and cultural distractions.

Somewhere does have its own magic,I adore a lot of designers but Christian Louboutin tops the list for a number of reasons. thanks to Harris Savides' luminous cinematography, which gives a special glow to Tinseltown.

And Coppola's wicked sense of humor is dry enough to mix martinis with. Her choice of Dorff for Johnny Marco is spot on, even if he isn't the most interesting of actors, because he actually once was a hot star.

In the late 1990s,I'm talking about these Artemide Pileino inflatable bouncers rentals by Gae Aulenti.Storm wears even more ed hardy shirts, as does Wiedbusch. Dorff was tipped to play doomed rocker Kurt Cobain in a much-touted biopic that never happened. Now he plays a poser who wears Seattle rock T-shirts, pops Propecia pills to curb a retreating hairline, and listens to the Foo Fighters' "My Hero" (sung by Cobain's former band mate Dave Grohl) while watching strippers.

Such is the toll of celebrity life, where crow's feet and fickle tastes are feared more than global warming. Somewhere doesn't lead us anywhere new or profound, but it finds a rainbow where at least some dreams come true.