Easily misunderstood film

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2004)

I have to declare my interest up front - I really liked this film.
It is easy to dislike this movie as it presents a situation which 99% of people never face. Being trapped in a land which is so foreign to what you are used to, being unable to speak the language, dealing with customs that you are unfamiliar with. This is an uncommon experience, and Coppola's framing of the delicate story between Bob and Charlotte is wonderfully seductive when put into the context of "fish out of water". As a character study it's deep in parts and shallow in others. It trots out some of what has been called by other reviewers "tired old racist jokes", but that misses the point. Real human beings, caught in a place that they are unfamiliar with, react with humor, xenaphobia and sometimes cruelty.

The true beauty of this film is the delicate flower of the relationship that builds between Bob and Charlotte. Forget about all the neon, forget about the Japan jokes, focus on the dynamic between the two leads and you hopefully will feel what I did - warmth, longing, contentment. When framed against the cold of a foreign city, the isolation of both their current relationships and the feeling of being remote from all the people around you, and the quiet disjointedness that they both suffer from in their "normal" lives, you can see why this is such a good film.