A Quiet Breath Of Fresh Air

Rating: 9/10 (16 March 2004)

In 1999, Sofia Coppola's first film debuted at Cannes amongst a lot of fanfare, and for good reason. In Lost In Translation, only her second film, she fashions a jewel of a film. Like in her first film, The Virgin Suicides, Coppola expertly blends atmosphere, cinematography, mood, and music with a great original screenplay to reveal a special, perfect moment in time between real people. This is how it happens in real life, not in the typical Hollywood way with a super hunk. When Bob Harris leaves Tokyo and returns to his mundane family life, we believe that he'll recall this event in his life as one of those times where he made a real, genuine connection with another human being. It just so happens that the connection is with an attractive young girl 30 years his junior.
Dispensing with almost all Hollywood clichÃ©s of similar stories, Sofia Coppola creates a unique film with characters and dilemmas so real it's equally both painful and joyful to watch. Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a mid 50's actor, who has been sleepwalking through his life. His marriage is ordinary, from what we can tell, and his professional life is has become just another event in his ordinary day. Enter Scarlett Johansson, a very early 20's girl, who feels lonely in a foreign country, and with a husband that seems too busy with working as a photographer with a silly girl, played by Anna Faris. Appearing in better films like this should do wonders for her credibility. Murray and Johansson meet accidentally a few times before drifting together in sort of a friendship that harbors them from the realities of their lives and being alone in a foreign country. The time they spend together illuminates both their lives and ours in positive ways. This film is about intimacy, emotional intimacy. The counter-culture writer Charles Bukowski once said that he didn't care if a significant other ever cheated on him by having sex with someone else, but he wouldn't like it if she kissed someone else. The reason being is that a kiss is a denotation of intimacy; where as, sex is just a physical act to him. In Lost In Translation, we see a friendship develop that is so intimate as to make us feel we are physically intruding, especially in the whispering scene. Coppola creates not only a special relationship between her characters, but one between them and us. And, that's something that most great films do. Sofia Coppola has established herself as a talented director to watch. ***1/2 of 4 stars.