Murray and Johansson are a fine pair in a good movie- B+

Rating: 7/10 (30 September 2003)

Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation isn't a film that moves at a particularly speedy pace, and I suppose I should've expected that. A lot of times her characters seem to be enclosed within the city of Tokyo, the buildings and Asian ambiance shining onto the American characters like some kind of alien presence they're not used to. I liked her usage of the atmosphere of the city, and how she took time to tell the story. Although at times some of the conversations between the characters either a) weren't too interesting or b) the answers to the questions they asked each other were sort of self-explanatory when we see the characters by themselves within their hotel rooms for stretches of time. While she didn't make a great movie, she did do a competent enough job as a director to let her two leads, Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson, give off the some of the most touching performances of the year.
In fact, this is a film that Bill Murray fans have been waiting a while for (his best work at getting inside a role since 98's Rushmore): a character who is has humor, yet only because it helps him (as well as us) feel comfortable around such odd people. He plays Bob Harris, an actor who can't get work in the states and, like other real life actors, goes to appear in advertisements in other countries. In the hotel bar, drinking the whiskey he helps to sell (regretfully, we learn, as he wants to act in plays), he meets a complete stranger names Charlotte (Johansson), who is tagging along, more or less, with her celebrity photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi). They befriend each other, hang around each other out of something between boredom and loneliness, and the film chronicles their encounters, a small event or two that would be expected to come out of real life, and it's done without romance one would expect in any conventional story.
There is humor in the film, which helps ease the feeling that the film lingers longer than it should here and there, but it's executed with a sweetness, a reality that proves again what makes Murray one of the best of the post-SNL actors. For example, there's a scene where Charlotte goes to get a black toe examined, and Bob waits in the waiting room next to a weird little Japanese guy who's just smiling. He starts to talk to Bob, giving a gesture with his finger to point out something about the world, and Bob follows along imitatively bringing out some earned laughs not at the little guy, but with him like Bob does. Such moments could've made Lost in Translation a great movie, and in terms of film acting it nearly is. Maybe I just saw too many moments where there was pandering, or lingering for the next good scene.