Sofia Coppola begins with the overload. “Go to Marc Jacobs”, it is quickly spoken to the camera. The star is currently inviting you to the big show, while quickly cut sketches, recordings of fashion shows, film scenes and all sorts of time colors pass from the image archives of the past decades. After her drama “Priscilla” about the unhappily married wife of Elvis Presley, Coppola returns with a new A24 production that dares to go to the fashion world of America. The first documentary work of the “Lost in Translation” director has a very personal point of reference.
In “Marc by Sofia”, Coppola portrays her long-time friend, the famous fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who experienced his breakthrough in the 1980s. Coppola accompanies him during the preparations for a new fashion show and collection. It shows him when planning, selecting fabrics or the perfect fingernail look. And again and again she talks to Jacobs about his life, work and sources of inspiration.
Sofia Coppola already makes it clear in the title of her film “Marc by Sofia” that she does not portray her protagonist from a critical distance, but a personal connection.
Fashion meets film history here. Because of course both worlds fertilize and network. When Marc Jacobs talks about his influences and formative cultural experiences, he comes to “Hello, Dolly!”, “Cabaret” and “Sweet Charity”, for example. It is about his admiration for Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli. The director asks where the fascination of homosexual men is moving from. And Jacobs can explain their theatricality with their “Camp of Womanhood”.
A film full of digressions and references
But it is not enough with cinematic inspirations. Numerous other connections to other artists and celebrities are opened, including within the fashion bubble. “Marc by Sofia” develops an entertaining, stirring assembly cinema that works again and again with the overwhelming and rapid of its impressions. But the film stays on the surface, can just agree on this sparkling, iconic world, but knows little exciting about the fashion industry apart from some fragmentary, sometimes somewhat trivial -looking self -reflections.
Instead, the film shows common places, obvious recordings that only reproduce aesthetics and productions instead of to wrestle a different way of looking at them. If you were not familiar with what distinguishes and stands out Jacob's style beforehand, you are only moderately smarter after the film.
Everything is messy
Coppola can be credited positively that it did not go the most convenient path. “Marc by Sofia” has Wagemut in his concept, which relies so strongly on the associative and winding. Other filmmakers would probably have tediously pressed such a biographical documentation into an order and clear timeline. They would have gone through the career of their stars bit by bit and then possibly reached the present at some point. At Coppola this is much more wild and it is not interested in such an orderly time beam logic. In short: Fortunately, “Marc by Sofia” has not become a Wikipedia cinema!
Instead, Coppola's directing and the cut by Chad Sipkin are quite aptly formed the fibrated logic and dynamics of such artist talks as they are held in front of the camera with Jacobs. There are short hangers, questions, chunks that are thrown. And then you come to speak and think in the sound. Of course, there is mentally shot out of the hip. You wanded off. You get to the thousandth of the hundredth, jump back and forth. Coppola's film tries to keep up with these jumps and react to what has been said with pictures. Sometimes one really believes to look into the artist's head where thoughts, ideas and memories in a colorful kaleidoscope frolic and overlay, which is constantly shaken up.
Interchangeable pictures
This captures the dazzling spectacles and facades of this fashion world. But ultimately it remains empty, lifeless. With every minute, “Marc by Sofia” becomes a purely pure gun that cannot endure to simply listen to the protagonist for longer when speaking, to give moments and facets of space for development. Instead, everything is to be pre -pressed permanently as quickly as possible and with archive images, although the material is often hardly visible where it comes from, what can be seen there and how it is related to the conversations. The rough recognition value is enough. The main thing is that it has something to do with what has been said.
The concrete, individual should always communicate with the collective image of history in history. But if you are honest, a large part of the film follows the principle of a desolate, easily consumable video montage, which simply does not want to succeed. And so the film throws a prominent name, a brand and anecdote after the other into the ring. Here is a dress for Paris Hilton, there a court outfit for Winona Ryder. Then one speaks briefly about the parents, the father of Jacobs who died early. Then there are one or the other story from the study time. Then it goes back to work in the present.
What interests Sofia Coppola in fashion?
“Marc by Sofia” is an image film for Jacobs who shows a disappointing blindness. Perhaps it is due to the familiarity between Coppola and her protagonist. Perhaps a little distance is actually missing to think deeper, which is actually so interesting about the whole world, what it means today. With the fascination of an inexperienced fan, Coppola immerse yourself in the world of haute couture. But isn't that too naive?
It is not a question that the director has to dig in corpses in the basement or have to criticize a criticism or the like. But Coppola has no particularly focused look for the actual work processes around the fashion show, which is supposed to contain the whole film. It does not manage to adequately map the economic reality and the media circus or the processes of artistic work. Not to mention the concrete craftsmanship that is followed by the mere idea. Also there are only short cutouts. Here a shoulder area is stopped. There, a dress on the back has to be held together with safety needles, but that's it.
Finale on the catwalk
It's not like having to watch Jacobs like to watch and listen. The designer is personable and interesting enough to wear such a film. But Coppola's directorial work only finds a striking, stubborn cinematic perspective in the last act. Then, for example, when models are made up for the big appearance. The camera sometimes goes so close to it that the bodies become a strange landscape. Man is rushed to the everyday view. It is also exciting that at the fashion show, no impression of wholeness, does not want to set aesthetic perfection. Instead, Coppola formally runs this impression into the exact opposite.
Putoring on the catwalk is slowed down in slow motion, but Coppola gives the audience little time to admire the costumes and clothes. Rather, parts of the body and outfits are broken down into countless close-ups. Suddenly you only see a piece of fabric up close or the skin of the neck and shoulder area. The overall picture is denied the camera. The artistic work is completed. It is presented publicly, but is already falling back into all individual parts to initiate the next creative process.
Coppola talks to Marc Jacobs about the “post-art-done” feeling, based on “postpartum” or “postpartum”. The emptiness and exhaustion after a finished artistic work. The time in which creative people have to sort and collect to start a new phase of life. And at the end of this film you feel a similar emptiness, which art and artists only know how to capture references and small personal splinters. This is getting to know you at eye level, which rarely goes beyond the small talk.
Conclusion: Sofia Coppola has dedicated a benevolent, entertaining, but much too confused and superficial documentary portrait to the friend of the friend. “Marc by Sofia” tries to find a corresponding form for the individual interviews, but is lost in names, scraps of images and tons of archive material that wants to illustrate a lot, but shows little.
We saw “Marc by Sofia” at the Venice Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere out of competition.