United in alienation... beautiful star quality, but over-hailed suaveness

Rating: 6/10 (1 June 2004)

Suave drama of two Americans (declining actor Murray and ignored young wife of celebrity photographer, Johansson ) meeting at star hotel in Tokyo, uniting in alienation of their soulless lives... and quite possibly falling in love.
Writer-director Sofia Coppola may or may not tell her own adolescent, not-so-average upbringing, but this tale is executed with a rare simplicity by Hollywood standards and paradoxically, therein lies both its strength and weakness. Culture clash is just one theme here, providing most of the laughs (I saw this with Swedish subtitles and the Japanese dialog was thankfully NOT translated, enabling character identification even more). However, I lack a certain punch somewhere in the overall emotional content - a need for significant, not necessarily melodramatic, events to avoid that the story is running on empty a bit much, which it does. So I cannot agree to the ubiquitous much-hailed 'granditude' of this picture; it's just too esoteric.
But the final scene is overwhelmingly beautiful. We don't NEED to hear what Murray is saying to Johansson, and we're not meant to, either. It doesn't feel like a love story, nor a father & daughter drama, either - the characters are just united in alienation, not only by the setting, but also in their separate private lives. And still, nobody makes a suffering deadpan like Murray - and Johansson is arrestingly gorgeous!
So, 6 out of 10 from Ozjeppe