Fish Out of Water Romance

Rating: 8/10 (29 June 2008)

Although clearly not in the same league, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) has at least one thing in common with such classics as Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and Blue Velvet: its opening sequence contains an extreme anatomical close up. Rather than disembodied lips, eyes, or ears, however, the viewer is treated to a close up of Scarlett Johansson's panty-clad, recumbent rear end. Eye-catching as the shot may be, I'm not sure of its intent - unless it's a sly dig at female body fetishizing in American (and Japanese) cinema. Whatever, Lost in Translation is an arresting and amusing blend of romantic comedy and fish-out-of-water satire.
The "water" here is contemporary Japan and the out-of-it fish are Bill Murray playing Bob Harris, an over-the-hill, unhappily married actor brought to Japan to do celebrity endorsement ads for Suntory whiskey and Johansson playing Charlotte, a recent Yale philosophy grad who is hanging out in Tokyo listlessly taking in sights and visiting with friends while her photographer husband is busy with various shoots. According to the conventions of romantic comedy, the two eventually meet cute and strike up a friendship that threatens to become a love affair but never quite does. The stars crossing these potential lovers are age difference and complicated lives. Thrust together by boredom, cultural alienation and pure chance, both sense that their relationship is necessarily transient and Platonic.
Immediately following the opening butt-shot, Lost in Translation begins its whimsical and mildly satiric view of Japan with an airport hostess in voice-over welcoming visitors to the New Tokyo Airport while Harris taxis through a night scape of great glass department stores and skyscrapers surrealistically saturated in neon ads. He wakes to see a gargantuan Suntory billboard ad of himself promoting the whiskey in Japanese. Doing a double take, he rubs his eyes to clear them of culture shock. Throughout much of Lost in Translation, the viewer must do likewise, metaphorically speaking. The overarching vision of Tokyo is that of a fun house mirror reflection of Western culture, a major Asian city somehow crossbred with Las Vegas and Times Square with beautifully bizarre results.
Harris's first 48 hours in Japan humorously establish his strangeness in a strange land. His shower head, for instance, only reaches his nose, and the exercise machine in the hotel's gym barks instructions in Japanese as it races completely out of control like the feeding machine in Chaplin's Modern Times. The scenes shooting new ads for Suntory are filled with language barrier jokes such as receiving the direction to act like Sinatoro, leader of the "lat pack." Funniest of all, perhaps, is the late night visit from a Japanese hooker sent as a welcome present from the president of Suntory. "Lip my stockings," she implores. "Lip them!" Eventually Harris gets the idea that she means "rip," but the hooker then acts out a dramatic rape fantasy that apparently turns on her rich Japanese clients, but leaves Harris completely baffled and alarmed.
The film's two main characters finally meet in the American themed lounge of the hotel they share. From their first casual encounter at the bar, they develop a potent chemistry based on their disconnection from the cultural surroundings, their unhappy marital relationships, and their similarly sardonic senses of humor. Moreover, each is having a difficult time with a key life passage. Harris is deep into a midlife crisis and Charlotte is facing the classic identity crisis of a young adult. Their adventures together begin after Harris charms her with a playful proposition: "Can you keep a secret? I'm trying to organize a prison break. I'm looking for an accomplice. We'd have to get out of this bar, then the city, then the country. You in or you out?" Over the next few evenings, Harris and Charlotte trip the light fantastic in a variety of Japlish pop culture venues. Charlotte's Japanese friend "Charley Brown" takes them to a strange strip club with sexually explicit hip hop music ("Suckin' on my Titties") blaring in the background and then to his apartment for dancing, pot, and a few inevitable rounds of karaoke. The adventures reach a soul-searching climax in Harris's room sipping drinks in bed and watching a re-run of La Dolce Vita. Charlotte confesses: "I''m stuck. Does it get easier?" And Harris answers: "No. Yes. It gets easier. . . . The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you." They then fall asleep without the anticipated sexual consummation. Indeed, Harris and Charlotte's "fine romance" is much more akin to an old-fashioned Astaire/Rogers tease than to the illicit sexuality of, say, Woody Allen's affair with the teen-aged Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan.
On the morning of Harris' departure, he and Charlotte say almost nothing. "Aren't you going to wish me a good fright or something?" A look of terrible loss is written on Harris' face as Charlotte retreats to the elevator with a curt "O.k., bye." But on the way to the airport Harris glimpses her on the sidewalk and chases after, seemingly setting up a classic clichéd romantic comedy ending, but instead we get a prolonged heartfelt embrace climaxed by Harris's mysterious, unheard whispering into Charlotte's ear. Speculation about what was said, of course, abounds. Romantics might assume that a future assignation is being arranged, but that would negate the entire thrust of the film. Instead, the whispers probably reiterate Harris's assurance that Charlotte will indeed find herself and grow from a gorgeous and intriguing young lady into a beautiful and accomplished woman. The soundtrack's exit music ("Just like honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain) connects both to Charlotte ("Listen to the girl as she takes on half the world") and to Harris as he journeys back to repair his nearly broken marriage and in-the-dumps career ("Walking back to you is the hardest thing that I can do"). Thus this brief encounter ends not in romance but with the mutual-aid opening of blocked passages.