Francis Ford Coppola’s latest — and probably last — film Megalopolis ends with a dedication to his wife Eleanor who died earlier this year. But, in a sense, the entire movie is a dedication to her. The film is not only a self-portrait, but a portrait — nay, a celebration — of a marriage.

Francis and Eleanor met on the set of one of Francis’ earliest films, Dementia 13 when she was working as an assistant art director. For decades, her professional life revolved around her husband. She accompanied the notoriously erratic filmmaker on his projects, documenting them in writing and on film. She also raised their kids, eventually providing similar making-of documentation for their daughter Sofia. It wasn’t until 2016 that she directed a film herself.

With lofty speeches about falling empires and possible utopias, Megalopolis aims to be about America. But Coppola’s perspective on the country — or even New York City, the inspiration for the film’s New Rome — is too limited. Instead the film, at its broadest, is about cinema and, at its narrowest, is about Francis, Eleanor, and their family’s dynasty.

Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, a genius architect (scientist? city planner? artist?) whose discovery of a substance called megalodon has won him a Nobel Prize and the possibility of fulfilling his utopic dreams. Like any dreamer, he has a strong stable of detractors: Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the universally hated mayor of New Rome, his uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), the blubbering billionaire who owns Crassus National Bank, and his enfant terrible cousin Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) who resents Cesar’s success.

When the film begins, Cesar is still mourning the death of his wife while having an empty affair with conniving reporter Wow Platinum. Aubrey Plaza as Wow is one of the film’s most undeniable strengths. She captures Coppola’s slippery tone, going only as big as the film demands. Wow dreams of becoming a Power Couple™ with Cesar, but he only dreams of his late wife — that is until he meets Mayor Cicero’s party girl daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who despite her slutty reputation turns out to (GASP!) actually be quite smart.

Megalopolis is the rare film that is at its best in its second act. Julia’s pursuit of Cesar and their courtship finds them meeting as unlikely equals. Their overlapping worlds of excess and invention are compelling and allow Coppola, the dreamer, to be on full display. But once bonded, Julia fades into the background. She now exists only to support Cesar’s ambitions. At one point, she even says, “I have to get home to make dinner,” a shockingly mundane line for a script that has Adam Driver quoting Shakespeare and Aubrey Plaza saying things like, “You’re anal as hell, Cesar. I, on the other hand, am oral as hell.”

One of the film’s subplots follows New Rome’s sacrificial virgin of a pop star, Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal). She is praised for her purity until her true self is uncovered and she rebrands like many Disney stars before her to Bad Girl. Coppola is able to observe the ways women in our society are forced into a virgin/whore dichotomy, and yet he mirrors this same perspective with Wow and Julia. The only difference in Coppola’s version of progress is Julia can have a slutty past as long as she’s completely dedicated to Cesar once they’re together.

At least, the dedication is reciprocal. Once united with Julia, Cesar resists the wiles of Wow. (Impressive.) But Wow or any other woman shouldn’t be Julia’s concern. Cesar’s true mistress is his work. Coppola’s vision of a relationship is one man, one woman, the man’s work, and their children.

Queerness exists in Coppola’s world but only as a marker for debauchery. Clodia (Chloe Fineman), Clodio’s sister and Julia’s party friend, is always kissing girls. This represents a form of sexual freedom more than any sort of sexual identity. At its most charmingly regressive, the film has a character exclaim, “Well, everyone prefers girls!” At its most troublingly regressive, it has Clodio carry out much of his scheming in drag.

The casting of LaBeouf — as well as Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight — was done purposefully. “What I didn’t want to happen is that we’re deemed some woke Hollywood production that’s simply lecturing viewers,” Coppola told Rolling Stone. “The cast features people who were canceled at one point or another. There were people who are archconservatives and others who are extremely politically progressive. But we were all working on one film together. That was interesting, I thought.”

Much like the film itself, this quote reveals that for Coppola politics exists in the theoretical. There is no concern for the safety of the rest of his cast and crew. Working with actors who have been accused of harassment or assault is merely a thought experiment to him. This works to some extent for Voight who is a former leftist feminist and the father of one of Hollywood’s most dedicated humanitarians. That he has turned into an unhinged Trump supporter in his old age adds a wacky element to his role as a powerful out-of-touch old man. This isn’t the case for LaBeouf. (Hoffman gets little to do other than show up in a couple of scenes.)

I’ve avoided watching LaBeouf on-screen since his former partner FKA twigs described the abuse she experienced in their relationship. I wasn’t prepared for how unwatchable I would now find him. This is especially true in his scenes that involve sex or violence. And it’s especially true when he’s in drag. I don’t care if a villain is queer-coded. But it feels gross to have a queer-coded villain (who will eventually be a stand-in of sorts for Trump and his faux populism) be played by a straight man who is known to be abusive.

While I believe Coppola’s portrayal of queerness is meant to capture something akin to Fellini’s Satyricon, it gains thematic importance portrayed alongside Coppola’s portrait of romance. If Cesar is the model for true progress while Clodio is the model for fake progress, heterosexual monogamy becomes intrinsic to Coppola’s dream for the future. It’s an oddly conservative thread for an artist who, in other ways, is so bold.

When the lights came up in the IMAX theatre, my partner turned to me and said, “That was literally just This Is Me… Now.” They’re right. But I don’t compare Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long passion project to Jennifer Lopez’s visual album as a critique. Both projects are self-funded tributes to the power of love and marriage that lead with gargantuan sincerity and bonkers visual effects. I admired This Is Me… Now more than most, but I admired the making of documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told even more. I wonder if I’ll feel the same about Megalopolis. Again and again Cesar insists the secret is asking the right questions not having the right answers. Maybe the final result is secondary to the process, the act of creation itself.

And so maybe it’s inaccurate to say Eleanor Coppola didn’t direct a film until 2016. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, her documentation of Francis’ Apocalypse Now, is a film of its own. The documentation of the art object becomes its own creation. What’s the famous Ginger Rogers description? Everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels? Eleanor was on all of those sets while raising kids and, presumably like Julia, making dinner.

Megalopolis may fail when its perspective stretches beyond Coppola. (I’ve addressed how it approaches queerness; I’d need to double these words to get into its visions of class and race.) But as a portrait of a filmmaking dynasty and a decades-long old-school marriage, it’s quite revealing. The world — at least Coppola’s world — will always credit Cesar, but Francis himself seems to know it’s Julia who has the tougher job.

I believe in Coppola’s love story — in life, in cinema. I also believe women are more than wives and pure creation shouldn’t be limited to genius men and people with the right last name. Shouldn’t there be room for everyone in utopia? Or does that ethos only apply to casting shitty men?

I’m just trying to ask the right questions.

Megalopolis is now in theatres.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!