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On the Rocks cast Jones, Murray: A party for the vain egomaniac
Photo: Apple TV +
In her late forties, director Sofia Coppola is now gradually as old as her films have always looked.
Since her debut film "The Virgin Suicides" from 1999, Coppola has amazed the cinema world with her wisdom and sense of elegance.
It always seemed to be oriented more towards classic literary narrative forms than ostensible cinematic constraints.
Her new film "On The Rocks" is also an old-fashioned, slow, wonderfully form-conscious New York ballad.
You can hear fine jazz songs in it.
Yellow taxis drive through astonishingly deserted and otherwise automobile-free urban areas.
Two magically well-behaved people philosophize for 90 minutes in carefully elaborated dialogues about a few big questions in life.
Why do people who love one another and swear eternal loyalty to one another still have sex with other people so often?
Actress Rashida Jones plays a writer with writer inhibitions and attacks of jealousy named Laura, while actor Bill Murray plays Felix, her wealthy old father and marriage counselor.
This is the basic constellation of a cheerful generational dialogue about role models, contemporary courtship behavior and parental love, in which all other participants remain just extras.
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"On The Rocks" actors Wayans, Jones, Liyanna Muscat, Alexandra Reimer: The husband jets through the world, the mother is condemned to look after children
Photo: Apple TV +
Laura has two adorable young children and a good-looking business man (Marlon Wayans).
For all her affection for children, she suffers from having to be a highly qualified mother who is damned to care for children.
Her husband, with his start-up team and a beautiful assistant, is constantly jetting to California or Mexico, Laura, on the other hand, sits at home and stares at her computer screen when the children are quiet.
When she vaguely suggests to her father, a once successful art dealer and an aging man, that her career man might be unfaithful, the old man immediately catches fire: In brutal, not particularly plausible detective work, it must be determined from then on whether Laura actually being cheated.
"On The Rocks", written and directed by Sofia Coppola, is a party for Bill Murray, at which Rashida Jones celebrates with a friendly smile.
The role of the ruffled old rich man, who hits on every waitress and uninvitedly plays the closest confidante to his daughter, is a gift for the well-loved jester of American cinema who has just turned 70.
Bill Murray starred alongside Scarlett Johansson in "Lost in Translation," perhaps Coppola's greatest hit of 2003. The film was set in a Tokyo hotel and won a screenplay Oscar.
17 years later, Murray, as the art dealer Felix, lets a chauffeur drive him through Manhattan and eats with his daughter in the city's finest restaurants.
Felix knocks out sexist slogans such as the fact that men are born to fight, to rule and to impregnate all women who offer themselves to them.
When the old man ignores a red light at the wheel of a vintage convertible and is caught by the police, he charms the police so thoroughly that they let him get away with impunity and push his car.
At the heart of this seemingly easy and sympathetically blabbered comedy is not about the betrayal Laura could suffer from an unfaithful husband, if he cheats on her at all.
It's about the injuries that old Felix himself inflicted on his daughter when he destroyed his own family many years ago.
In a touching moment, the vain egomaniac that Murray plays tries to make amends to his granddaughters for what he once did.
He teaches the little ones how to put on a poker face while playing on the floor of the luxury apartment where his daughter lives;
Which is of course very strange to look at from everyone involved.
Hiding his feelings, just not showing any sadness, Felix has mastered this.
In a heated argument in a particularly beautiful hotel, the father is then persuaded by his daughter to think about whether he may have failed completely as a family man - and like most scenes in this film, the director Sofia Coppola also has this showdown with a really old masterly Staged sovereignty.
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