Simple, funny and moving (***1/2)

Rating: 9/10 (19 October 2003)

Isn't it strange how it's often easier to open up and talk about your life, the meaning of everything and your own deepest problems with a complete stranger, as opposed to someone you've known your whole life?

This little irony is at the heart of "Lost Of Translation", a strange and funny comedy/drama set in the surreal neon jungle of Tokyo, Japan.

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, an American movie star who is in Tokyo to earn an easy couple million by doing a commercial, as many American celebrities do. Bored, lonely, and feeling like a sell-out, he meets 19 year-old Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson from "Ghost World") who is staying in the same hotel and is also bored and lonely, even though she is there with her husband, a neglectful, high-strung photographer (Giovanni Ribisi).

If this were a Hollywood movie, this would be the set-up for a cheesy May-December romance plot, but "Lost In Translation" is much deeper than that. This is a movie about friendship between two people, decades apart in age but both unhappy in the same way, who are able to make the other happy for a brief time. It's about both the nervousness and freedom you feel when you're a long way from home in a strange place, interacting with a completely different culture. It's about looking out your hotel window, down to a city that is busily alive while your own life stands still. And it's funny, too.
Bill Murray gives a performance that is funny, touching, and brilliantly deadpan - it's one of his best ever. And Scarlett Johansson does an amazing job forming such a convincing, poignant friendship with a man 34 years her senior. You really feel as if these two understand each other completely.

All vacations must end though, and both Bill and Charlotte have to get back to their regular lives, possibly never seeing each other again, which allows for one of the most realistic, moving final scenes I've seen in a while.

With all that, and a great soundtrack that features Elvis Costello, My Bloody Valentine, and the Jesus & Mary Chain, this is one of the best movies I've seen all year.
This is only writer/director Sofia Coppola's second film (after 1999's creepy, enigmatic "The Virgin Suicides") and definitely moves her up from "very promising" to "a sure thing". I'll definitely be looking forward to her third.