Since her atmospheric debut The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola has established herself as a director who makes tight-jeaned twenty-somethings go weak at the knees. Her follow up, Lost in Translation, captured both the effortlessly suave Bill Murray at his lugubrious best and the bright, highly stimulating confusion of urban Tokyo, whilst simultaneously making a profound statement on alienation and friendship.

Since then, I have awaited her every release with baited breath, satisfied that the daughter’s skills must have been inherited from her father, Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. Yet, 2006’s historical ice-cream factory Marie Antoinette left me cold, and her latest effort, Somewhere, starring Steve Dorff and Elle Fanning (the lesser known Fanning, her sister Dakota being the ubiquitous blond American child actor of choice in the 90s/00s), failed to capture anything but dull dissatisfaction.

“But that’s the whole point” scream the Coppola faithful, making use of that most irritating destroyer of post movie discussions. The protagonist, James Marcus, is a reckless movie star, isolated in his ivory tower, where he hires strippers and plays Guitar Hero, occasionally leaving for an aimless spin in his noisy black Ferrari. When his ex-wife takes off, Marcus is left to take care of his daughter, a situation which forces him to confront himself and the example he is setting his devoted and uncorrupted progeny.

Coppola is a smart director, and many scenes play out at an amiable pace, presenting well-crafted images and subtle sound effects – burning cigarettes, eggs bubbling on the stove. Perhaps the film’s best and most provocative scene sees Marcus slopped in silicone while a team of make-up artists mould him into old age, encasing him in darkness and offering a startling vision of his future self.

Somewhere is another tale of high profile seclusion from Coppola. Up to now this has proved a worthy subject, but in the process of capturing a personality deficient Hollywood star in crisis, Coppola has inadvertently made a slow and uninteresting film, assuming her audience to be obsessed with high profile lives enough to make watching them play video games and read text messages interesting viewing, when it isn’t.