Reviewed by David Levinson

HAVING GONE FROM being the 'girl who almost ruined The Godfather 3' to one of America's foremost female auteurs within the span of three years is quite the feat in itself. Nevermind for someone who spent the greater portion of her life standing in the artistic shadow of her father. Sofia Coppola's metamorphosis began with the release of her ephemeral, sophomore effort, The Virgin Suicides, in 1999, and according to many, she now stands bearing wings of her own with her recently delivered second film, Lost in Translation – a wet dream of hotel ambience, insomnia, Kevin Shields, and perpetual night.


Granted, the critical praise was to be expected. The film emerged like a fragile wisp amidst the drove of Hollywood's usual garish output, illustrating a more European sensibility of filmmaking. But the way it's gone on to be received has been both staggering and puzzling, especially in the open-arms embrace of a film that's as culturally reductive as this one.

Supposedly working from her own experience, the film revolves around two Americans, Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), stranded in Tokyo, Japan. He's a middle-aged actor, being paid two million dollars to shoot a whiskey commercial. She's accompanying her husband of two years, John (Giovanni Ribisi), a photographer. Staying in the same hotel, and propelled by mutual feelings of disconnection, they steadily gravitate towards one another, striking up a friendship that arises most prominently from their failure to break through the language barrier.

Hence, each seeks comfort through a retreat into the enclosed orb of their relationship, the film hovering between the weightlessness of the transient moment and the grind of existential soul-searching. The former tends to give heed to the film's most purely transcendental moments, as when the two momentarily shed their solipsistic cocoons and maneuver their way through Tokyo's streets – a metropolitan carnival of music and light – before finally giving into the abandonment of karaoke; Bill Murray gently crooning his rendition of Roxy Music's "More Than This" is a sight to behold, one that leaves the world standing on its threshold.

Yet with an over-reliance on the literalness of conversation, as Bob and Charlotte turn to console one another, that sickening feeling of aimlessness that comes with soul-searching is never allowed to permeate the film's surface. As such, bursts of pleasure remain isolated, hovering above a landscape of life's uncertainties and regrets, and unable to function as some form of release.

Much of the problem lies in the film's failure to distinguish between alienation – a ubiquitous, numbing force – and boredom, the approximation of which is static shots of characters idly staring out of windows, or idly playing golf, or idly witnessing Japanese ceremonies and not "feel[ing] anything". And as both Bob and Charlotte never try to fill the empty space, to reach out and interact with the world around them, their disconnection is entirely self-imposed. It's a world that's never made out to be hostile – merely impenetrable, as Coppola fuels her neon-glazed Japan with bizarrely distorted caricatures – making a retreat all the more angering because it's so obviously founded on superiority. Wes Anderson was able to unsheathe the sadness beneath Murray's humour, and place it in a context where it reverberated with a resigned world-weariness. Here, it's merely founded in embitterment, played off against the country's staggering hospitality. How else is one to take Bob's glibly ironic "Lat Pack" impression, as a Japanese commercial director feeds him directions in a stream of broken English? Or the call girl, who demands he "lip [her] stocking", as Bob stares on in disbelief? It's obvious that Sofia's more than adept as a filmmaker; it's just that, as a human being, she has a thing or two to learn.