Excellent

Rating: 9/10 (2 May 2005)

If you like and appreciate American Beauty, I'm pretty sure you'll like this film too. The photography is very good, the insights are very well observed and portrayed, and the lead characters are very well acted. There are many subtle touches throughout the film that set it apart from mainstream and make it special. Scarlett Johanssen delivered a great and sensitive performance for such a young actress.
The film examines loneliness, and the challenges of married life as experienced at opposite extremes, right fresh at the start, and after many years. In this sense it was very perceptive. If you are married and you travel internationally, you will relate to this film in a major way. When abroad, one's life is always viewed much more dispassionately for what it is, when the surrounding context is absent. It's not uncommon in that situation for doubts and longings to set in. Both characters seem to be wondering if they will make it. Can Charlotte endure what seems to be developing in her life? For another 20 years? Can Bob put up with the continuing inanities of his married situation? But although Bob is severely tested, he appears to come though with the wisdom of experience. He tolerates the craziness of everything with resignation, but fortitude. He gives Charlotte some hope. But at the same time, as we all do at times, he's yearning for escape from the confines of his married situation.
The title seems a very good one as there are many themes explored within the context of communication. Are each of the spouses communicating? The fax machine never stops and the phone keeps ringing, but Bob and his wife don't really communicate anything meaningful. His weary, rote "I love you" is even cut off. Charlotte's husband never stops talking, but he isn't listening to his wife and apparently doesn't care what she says. He says "I love you" a lot, but he's apparently dead in bed is so focused on his work that his wife might as well not exist. Likewise the Japanese hosts never stop yakking, or the talk show hosts screaming, but nothing much is communicated. The nightclub crooners croon but again it falls on deaf ears. The real stuff happens in the small group at the nightclub and when C and B are alone together. Translation can also mean displacement in space, and that is what has happened to our protagonists. Good title.
Despite their frustrations, C and B remain basically true to their spouses in the end. They share a lot of intimacy and experience something unique that they will never forget, but life must go on, and they know they have to keep trying (at least for now). This is true to life. This film is an affecting vignette of an experience that you feel could happen. If you haven't seen it and like films with depth and subtlety, you won't be disappointed.