Good as far as it goes ...

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2003)

I was properly skeptical of this one, given who made it. (I'm sorry, I have a thing about nepotism. OK?!) It's nicely observed, canny in its casting and its refusal to try to turn the story into more than it really is. Coppola is one of the few (I can hardly think of another one, in fact) American directors who seems to understand that showing her characters in repose can reveal as much as showing them in manic overdrive, and that alone makes her worth keeping tabs on. It also benefits technically from the Coppola family connections - clearly a top-notch crew worked on this one. And except for the opening shot, it's a tasteful exercise.
But an exercise is almost all it is. This is a slender movie with a thin story (or is that a thin movie with a slender story? never mind, you get my point). It's the work of a writer-director who faces the same dilemmas as the woman in her movie - wants to say something but isn't sure what it is, seriously lacking in experience of the world. And so Ms. Coppola took the wise course of making a film about that very condition.
The trouble is that she doesn't have an awful lot to tell us about it. Partly that's because there isn't that much to tell, and she's smart enough not to push it. But she could have done better. Why is this film set in Tokyo? No reason having to do with the two characters or the plot - mainly, I suspect, because it offers the chance for some broad humor at the expense of the Japanese (a strange people, aren't they?) that pads out the story quite a bit but doesn't illuminate the pair's relationship or their inner condition. And while Johansson and Murray are fine (especially Murray), you wonder afterwards why we learn so little about these two. I'm sure it's boring sitting around in an antiseptic Tokyo hotel, but ... don't they have any books to read? don't they have any postcards to send? don't they even have some goddam email to collect and answer? do they have anything to do, in other words, but sit around looking beautifully bored?
Thanks to the acting, the two characters emerge as more than just concepts, but just barely. Coppola has made a very good film that benefits from some ringers (fine production values, two good performances). But I wonder if she has a clue where she's going to go from here: Another one like this and we'll have to wonder what else she can do. I'd advise not writing the script next time, and instead directing one with entirely different subject matter concerning people very different from the relatively privileged ones who inhabit her first two films. It may not work, but it's time for this director to test her boundaries.
As for Lost in Translation: For her sake, I hope it doesn't win a lot of Oscars.