Ace

Rating: 9/10 (12 April 2005)

Bob Harris is a middle-aged actor as ugly as a monk with a grudge, stranded in Tokyo while he films a whisky commercial. Alone and bored, he discovers a kindred spirit in Charlotte, a twenty-something newlywed with an increasingly irksome and absent husband. The pair find solace from the city's disorientating strangeness in an uncategorisable relationship which drifts between father-and-daughter-like bonding and romantic tension.
Director Sofia Coppola displays faith in the audience's perceptiveness to understand characters and situations without excessive narration; romance radiates from the natural sense of warmth and sensitivity not as the result of explicit, manipulative scripting. Her mostly subtle approach is validated by the brief, ill-advised scenes of broad humour which rely on the apparent intrinsic hilarity of small people.
Bill Murray's droll, dark eyes plead to be sparked with life. His apathetic body-language displays a bemused resignation to fate, crucial to the sad but inevitable conclusion. Scarlet Johansson is a luminous presence, beautiful and graceful. However, both of their characters would have benefited from more empathetic situations; Bob is annoyingly dismissive of his work despite his excessive earnings and luxurious treatment while Charlotte's 'alienation' can frequently be inter operated as mere petty sulkiness.
The cinematography masterfully captures the seductive but hollow neon-landscape of Tokyo and thankfully doesn't presume the viewer will jerk-with-astonishment at the mere sight of symmetry as in The Virgin Suicides, and is sublimely complimented by the ambient, melancholic music of My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus And Mary Chain. Lost In Translation outclasses Richard Curtis' calculated shmatlz and is directed with enough warmth to make anyone overcritical feel like a perpetually-miserable black heart.