It stalks you for days........

Rating: Null/10 (26 August 2004)

Firstly, don't watch this movie if you want a laugh, or to be entertained. This is one of the few exquisite films which require more of the viewer than sponge-like passivity. You have to allow the characters to speak to you, and to enter their world if you are able, or if you dare. Some will not be prepared or able to do this - such is the nature of film-making as an art-form.
I've heard Scarlett Johansson in interview mention that she prefers little or no dialogue, and in this film it's clear why she says this. Scarlett Johansson is an actor, not a star - big difference - and her performance, along with Bill Murray's, is a joy to watch. I found their love affair - because that's what it is - to be exciting, realistic, and even traumatic at times, since the viewer is never sure how their relationship will pan out. Will they be brave enough to be honest with each other? There's a distinct line which they never cross, and I'm relieved that writer/director Sofia Coppola created that line; to have done otherwise would have been crass, and then this film would have become like so many other older man/younger woman stories.
I detected a gentle exchange taking place between the two main characters, in which the young woman - at the beginning of her marriage and her life - looks to this older man for a sense of direction and purpose in her life. Paradoxically, he looks to her for youth and enthusiasm and something which he feels he's lost, or perhaps never had. The fact that the story takes place in the alien environment of a Japanese city seems to me to be symbolic of how alienated we all feel at times in the world in which we live. I saw an irony in how shallow were the Americans which the Murray and Johansson characters met along the way, and then how Westernised some of the younger Japanese people had become, deliberately alienating themselves from their traditional culture. In searching for a sense of self, people generally choose to move away from the familiar, the comfortable and the expected. Those who resonate with this film are possibly taking this journey along with the characters.