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LOST
IN TRANSLATION
6/10
USA
2003 : Sofia COPPOLA : 105 mins
Two lonely
Americans, adrift and sleepless in a Tokyo hotel, drift into an unlikely
friendship that may or may not drift towards romance… This is an uneven,
fragmentary little movie dominated by the central performances by Bill
Murray (as Bob, a faded star of Hollywood action [?!] movies) and Scarlett
Johansson, as philosophy-graduate (and Coppola-surrogate?) Charlotte.
Both are very good: Murray, though hardly departing very far from his
usual hangdog I-don’t-give-much-of-a-shit territory, does especially well
with the limited material he’s given.
Because Coppola’s
script is a frustratingly skimpy affair, which makes some very immature
jokes at the expense of the Japanese and their pronunciation of Rs and
Ls. There aren’t any proper Japanese ‘characters’ here as such, despite
the prominent billing given to Fumihiro Hayashi (who presumably had more
to do in an original cut). Apart from Bob and Charlotte, everyone else
is little more than a caricature, including Charlotte’s dweeby-trendy
fashion-photographer husband John (Giovanni Ribisi), John’s airhead actress
friend Kelly (Anna Faris), and a lounge-singer (Catherine Lambert) who’s
stuck with an especially thankless role (but who, since she’s a real-life
lounge-singer in this very Tokyo hotel, is probably glad of the publicity).
Coppola’s
direction is also somewhat tentative and arbitrary (why begin with a shot
of Johansson’s backside?) – very much the kind of film, in fact, which
the finding-her-feet Charlotte would have made. Coppola aims for the same
kind of music-driven dreamy looseness of her so-so debut The
Virgin Suicides – pleasant enough, if a little lacking in substance.
That picture came and went with relatively little fanfare – Lost in
Translation has somehow ended up one of the year’s most acclaimed
movies, with four Oscar nominations. Murray’s is fully justified, which
is more than can be said for the nods for Coppola’s script and direction
(shamefully, she’s the first American woman to make that shortlist). Most
baffling of all, the Academy included the film in the Best Picture shortlist.
Then again,
most of the Academy voters are actors, and Lost in Translation
is very much an actors’ showcase – they also probably felt that they
should nominate a relatively ‘small’ indie alongside behemoths like Return
of the King and Master
and Commander. In addition, the ‘cheap’ ($4m) film has also done
well ($30m+) at the US box office – largely, one suspects, because of
the fuzzy but ultimately quite touching relationship between Bob and Charlotte.
Like the film itself, the relationship is offbeat and somehow rather beguiling…
even if it never quite manages to come into focus.
9th February,
2004
(seen 5th February : Tyneside
Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne)
first seen
29th October, 2003 : click here
for original review (rating after first viewing : 5/10)
by Neil
Young
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