A comparison.

Rating: Null/10 (11 March 2004)

This and Le Divorce (2003) beg to be contrasted because a central theme of both has to do with a love affair between and older male and a younger female. In both cases the girls are very similar--bright, but with too much time on their hands; typically American, but transported to a foreign (France, Japan) culture; naive, but with an itch for greater sophistication, and ripe for a controversial liaison. Both find their adventure through a relationship with an older male, and their characters develop some depth of understanding as a result of that encounter. The older males in each case, however, are completely different from each other, and it is on that basis that these two films need to be opposed.
The male of Le Divorce is a traditional cad--an unrepentant hedonist who enjoys nothing so much as taking advantage of precocious young women. In exchange for their sexual favors he expands on their worldly sophistication, but if they develop any depth of character along the way, he soon loses interest. He doesn't `want' to have a serious relationship, and is too arrested in terms of his own emotional development to handle one. As a result, when they eventually outgrow him, he moves on to find yet another.
Inversely, the male in Lost In Translation is a kind of `Cyrano De Bergerac' figure, self-conscious about his role in relation to the younger girl. Whether he would like to seduce her or not, the fact remains that he does `care' about her. Naively, she might be willing to settle for sex, but that would be taking advantage of her, when what she really needed was a friend. He has to struggle with that dilemma. Ultimately he is able to resolve it in such a way that they both grow from the experience and learn to love each other on a much higher level. For that reason it is a much better film, speaking to the integrity of the human spirit and not just its passions.