Touching and honest movie, Scarlett Johansson is outstanding!

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2005)

One of the greatest romantic movies of all time. Sofia Coppola had already proved with "The Virgin Suicides" she's very talented, has an eye for detail and that she's gifted to write heartbreaking and moving screenplays. This movie is not a classical love story about two people who meet, fall in love and have sex. It's the impressive and touching story of a lonely American woman who followed her husband (who has some work to do over there as a photographer) to Japan. In the bar of the hotel she meets the American actor Bob Harris, who is in Japan to do some well-paid commercials.
Both characters are in a difficult stage in their life. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is married for a couple of years and the feeling you have when you are completely in love with someone and the other person is also completely in love with you, the feeling that you are very special and unique for that other person; that feeling is completely gone. Charlotte is afraid that her husband doesn't really love her anymore and that she doesn't mean much to him.
Bob (Bill Murray) is married for more than 15 years and he has the feeling that the best years of his marriage are over. He wife only thinks about shallow things and they don't have much to say to each other when they talk.
Charlotte, as well as Bob, is very lonely. Not the first time, when they meet in the bar, but the second time they meet, they feel there is a connection. It is this connection that brings them together and makes them able to talk about things they couldn't talk about with anyone else because they would not understand it. It is this connection that makes this movie so special.
Bill Murray was great but I loved Scarlett Johansson even more. Her acting performance was heartbreaking and I think she really deserved an Oscar-nomination. I've seen this movie twice in 5 days time and I can't get enough of it. The ending is just magnificent and the one kiss makes this movie completely perfect. Coppola is very talented and she capable of saying very much with the amazing stories she writes.
Everyone who has enough of all the shallow Hollywood-romantic movies and wants something honest and deep, something touching and sensitive but not melodramatic must definitely see "Lost In Translation", it's one of my favourites of all time!