Two Artists Talk Fashion, Fosse, & More

In her fictional worlds, Sofia Coppola revels in opulent surfaces only to reveal the hollowness underneath. Her first foray into documentary, Marc by Sofia, is all the more interesting as a different approach to investigating glitz and glamour. In conversation with fashion designer Marc Jacobs, Coppola spotlights the humanity and hard work that inform the look of luxury.

Coppola is far from a neutral observer of Jacobs, who drew on iconography from her feature debut, The Virgin Suicides, for a new fragrance and hired her to direct the launch commercial. Evident in his candor across the film, Jacobs feels a sense of comfort around this collaborator and kindred artistic spirit. While Marc by Sofia unquestioningly presents the “official narrative” around Jacobs’s life and career, Coppola avoids outright hagiography by leaving unfiltered moments of hesitation and stammering as he formulates his responses.

The film feels most alive when, instead of letting archival footage do the heavy lifting or allowing Jacobs to offer monologues, Coppola and the designer talk on equal footing. Jacobs often looks to cinema for inspiration, with influences ranging from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant to Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, and his ability to enter into dialogue around their aesthetic appeal with Coppola helps illuminate why their sensibilities pair so well.

In taking-head interviews, Jacobs professes that he sees his role as a fashion designer as analogous to that of a theater director. This vision, synthesized from the inputs and influences he absorbs like a sponge, might belong to him, but Jacobs cannot achieve it alone, so he must marshal the contributions of assorted departments in service of a shared output. Coppola shows this mindset in action throughout Marc by Sofia, albeit with only the most cursory attention to the other personalities who go into producing his 2024 spring collection.

Despite Jacobs and Coppola sharing equal prominence in the film’s title, this isn’t a Hitchcock/Truffaut-esque meeting of the minds where both parties participate in a true exchange of ideas. Coppola lacks that journalistic instinct to penetrate, not just prompt, Jacobs with her line of questioning. The filmmaker largely takes Jacobs at face value and only seems to get the nerve to ask more hard-hitting personal questions in an unguarded shoot at his home the day after a runway show that the documentary builds toward.

Coppola cuts between Jacobs narrating the multi-decade arc of his career and depictions of the behind-the-scenes turmoil leading up to the big seasonal presentation, with each thread seldom complementing the other. Coppola’s camera captures the assembling of a collection with voyeuristic fascination but little insight into Jacobs’s decision-making. For a designer who claims to discover his work through the act of creation rather than receiving spontaneous jolts of inspiration, the film hovers too far away from the details that power his process.

“It isn’t the truth, but it’s the story I like to go with,” Jacobs confesses after recounting a chronicle of his past to Coppola. The same could be said of Marc by Sofia itself. This documentary proves entertaining and enlightening when exploring Jacobs’ contributions to the world of fashion. But more often, it’s just like listening in on an engaging chat between two artist friends who share a fan-like admiration of each other’s craft.