Sofia Coppola's perfectly tuned ode to second thoughts (with minor spoilers)

Rating: 9/10 (25 September 2003)

There is a lot of hype these days for `Lost In Translation,' all of which it more than lives up to, but hype itself is dangerous. I'm hesitant to give any more breath to those flames because this is not the kind of film which will answer heightened expectations well, especially if those expectations have been conditioned by the kind of picture we usually see coming out of Hollywood, even those films that are thought of as prestige pictures or art films. So if you haven't seen the film yet, I recommend you forget anything you might have read or heard already, and skip reading this. Go see it, and expect nothing but a graceful depiction of that least sensational of topics: second thoughts.
Contrary to the comedic zeitgeist of our times, `Lost In Translation' is a quiet film. It takes its time about everything. There isn't a damn thing quirky about it; in fact, while it is very funny at times, it's a bit morose overall. And while no movie with Bill Murray will ever be entirely devoid of irony, the kind of winking at the audience that too often now displaces genuine reflections of character is kept to its perfect minimum. Despite the circles director Sofia Coppola runs in, the film is much closer in spirit to Eric Rohmer than to Spike Jonez or Wes Anderson, and as much as I enjoy what Spike and his kind do, I can't imagine a more welcome change in the weather about now.
It is also important not to expect too much here in the way of a story, or at least a plot. The set-up in Coppola's script is man-meets-girl, man-and-girl-flirt, man-and-girl-say-goodbye. It really doesn't get any more complicated than that, but as in real life (which `Lost In Translation' does and does not resemble in fine balance), those deceptively simple circumstances are planted with the worst kind of emotional traps, especially when the man and the girl are both married to others, and it's Sofia the Director who details that precarious landscape in uncanny relief.

More than anything else you might have read about what this picture means for its participants, more than a coming-out for Scarlett Johansson, more than the best shot Bill Murray has ever had for an Oscar, it indicates that Coppola has got it as a director. She knows how she wants us to feel at every moment, and uses her particular tools of choice - namely photography, music, and especially performance - to get us there.
Mostly what she wants us to feel is the tantalizing presence of `the what-if,' the attraction that an older man and a younger woman can hold for one another when they each find themselves fresh out of compelling interest in their own relationships. It's a theme torn from the pages of the oldest books in the world, so old you might think there'd be no life left in the premise at all, but it is in the subtle ways that Coppola achieves this tension that makes `Lost In Translation' unusual.
Holed up in the same Tokyo hotel, Bob (Murray) and Charlotte (Johansson) hover and drift around each other in increasingly tighter orbits, first by chance, and then by design, but until it becomes inevitable, they never make the kind of contact that their heightening attraction would demand. Instead, Coppola tells their story in the negative spaces, playing out their interaction as a finely modulated series of long and awkward silences, like musical pauses in a score where the notes tend to be the kind of banalities that anyone who's ever flirted in real life will recognize as authentic. All the while, Bob and Charlotte barely touch. The one bit of erotic contact that they allow each other at all is all the more remarkable for its minimalism, and while the moment may or may not have been inspired by `Claire's Knee,' it does call to mind Rohmer's masterpiece in its delicacy and the weight of its melancholy.
In a pop culture that idolizes excess, Coppola is gifted with restraint. Although she does lace the whole picture with a pleasing kind of levity (the punk-pop karaoke scene especially), there are no bouncy, swirling montages of the two illicit companions having the time of their lives; no near-miss scenarios wherein they almost get caught; no mawkish rows with their significant others to make clear how horrible things are at home, justifying their dalliance. In fact, Coppola is fine with suggesting that an attraction like this might reasonably take place between two people who are in relationships that are not grossly abusive, or just plain wrong from the get-go, but are merely in respective lulls.
By the time the end comes, we've come to feel there can't be a satisfying conclusion to this affair. Charlotte, and especially Bob, are simply too pragmatic and won't give in to the whimsy of their attraction. There will be no race to catch her at the airport, no promises to leave anyone's spouse, because they and we know that would be bogus and frankly wrong. Yet, just when we are resigned to leave these two in a state of despondency, Coppola pays off the whole experience with the subtlest of moves: an embrace, and a close exchange of words that we cannot hear and don't need to. By suppressing Bob and Charlotte's intimacy throughout the picture, this brief and elegant moment feels nearly orgasmic on the screen, and it's the kind of gesture a mediocre director could never have conceived, much less made to work.
Collaborating with director of photography Lance Acord, and her brother Roman, who directed the second unit, she's given the film a look that directly mimics her own still photography. Soft focus and muted colors dominate, except when she turns the camera on the bright lights of the Rappongi at night. Bright daylight is never allowed to intrude in this melancholic, interior world. Shoegazer extraordinaire Kevin Shields (formerly of My Bloody Valentine) was engaged to bring the equivalent sonic traits to the film's music.
Lastly, it is almost impossible to not think of the film as surprisingly candid, given the similarities between Charlotte and Sofia herself. Even physically, the comparison is there: Johansson is a more voluptuous version of the petite Sofia, but they share a wry, pouty face and a soft-spokenness that subtly draws one closer. More tellingly, Charlotte's fascinations are closely aligned to Sofia's. She dabbled in photography, and keeps an elaborate scrap book of drawings and writings much like the girls in Coppola's first film The Virgin Suicides. Charlotte's new husband, a rock photographer played by Giovanni Ribisi, is a dead ringer for Jonze, the real-life Mr. Sofia Coppola.
One can't shake the notion that there's a semi- or quasi- autobiographical element to this film, and that Charlotte's disillusionment with her young marriage reflects Coppola's. The recent news that Spike and Sofia are separated doesn't do much to dispel the idea. It doesn't really matter, of course, except to the degree that it would indicate Coppola's willingness to put herself into her art (her immediate self, at that, considering she was only married four years ago and it takes a good two years to get a movie made, and that's on the fast track). That level of honesty is no small thing, especially when the vanguard these days is obsessed with highly formalized cinematic detachment, and it's a huge bonus to the certainty of her talent.