Not a masterpiece, but very good nevertheless

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2005)

Good to see that so many people rate this film highly, in spite of the depressingly familiar reaction from others to what is a deliberately slowly paced study of displacement in an alien environment. Are those who found it boring really so used to fast editing and special effects that they cannot just sit still for ninety minutes ? The irony is that the two central characters find themselves at sea in a culture - modern Japan and Tokyo - which epitomises the very empty garishness that is typical of so much modern film.
My problem with Sofia Coppola's film is not that it is boring, or racist (though those with a social-political axe to grind may find it so). It is that the nature of the relationship between Charlotte and Bob is formed mainly out of shared awkwardness and alienation rather than affection, and that Bob's character intimates sexual desire rather than emotional affinity. Apart from in the final sequence, which, tellingly, was improvised rather than scripted, the characters are not allowed to just be with each other; rather, we see them dance around each other's need for connection, without actually connecting. For example, when Bob carries Charlotte to her hotel room, he does not need to look disappointed when she goes to sleep, simply accepting of their age difference. It's not that a physical relationship between them would be offensive, it's just not necessary. (In the strip bar scene they leave after only a few minutes.)
The contrast between Charlotte and the blonde movie star, and between Bob's one nighter with the hotel singer and the Bob-Charlotte relationship, is well made and sufficient to tell this tale. Sure, Bob's family and domestic trivia await his return, and Charlotte has been left to her own devices; but that's no reason for a full-blown affair, and the understated - until the last scene - affection between them is what carries the film.
My other problem with the film is Bill Murray himself. Perhaps it's that I never have liked him much, but I think it's more that he is, simply, being himself - or, rather, Bill Murray playing Bill Murray. So we get his typical facial grimaces and expressions, put to good use in the ironical and comic whisky commercial sequence. We see only the Bill Murray that we know, rather than a Bob that the actor might have been allowed to create.
So, a sensitively and beautifully shot portrayal of a putative relationship in a foreign culture. Scarlett Johansson is clearly destined for very great things, still and self-aware beyond her years, and Bill Murray will have done himself no harm by this self-portrayal. Ms Coppola has created a controlled and individual work with talent compounded of experience (instigated by her father ?) and observational skill. A pity that the surface of the film, typified in the title shot of Ms Johansson's prone behind, is at variance with its centre.