Lost in Translation
Sophia Coppola
London Film Festival, 2003

Toby Marshall

In Sophia Coppola's critically acclaimed romantic comedy two tired Americans have a limp liaison.

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a successful, fiftysomething, hack film actor who wishes he was working in theatre. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a young philosophy graduate who just can't find any meaning in her life. They meet in a vast Tokyo hotel. Bob is in Japan to promote a brand of whiskey, a job that pays him well, but eats at his soul. Charlotte is accompanying her work-obsessed husband, who has been commissioned to photograph a local rock band.

Despite the age difference, Bob and Charlotte soon strike up an intimate friendship based on a shared problem. Both are finding it hard to connect with their partners, who are shown to be lesser, more superficial, beings. Bob's wife, for instance, has a greater interest in the carpet samples she has air mailed to him than his rapidly unravelling self. While Charlotte's husband finds his plastic B-list celebrity clients more engaging than his insignificant other.

Bob and Charlotte's sense of social isolation is compounded by the culture in which they find themselves. The Japanese they encounter are mostly depicted as infantile in their interest in video games, comic in their politeness, or inscrutable in their religious practices. And the most sympathetic of them all, Sophia Coppola's real life pal Charlie, ultimately disgraces himself by inviting the pair to a seedy strip club.

Still, at least they have each other, for what remains of rather long 102 minutes. Murray, as we might expect, provides some effective comic relief, but this does little to rouse our interest in Bob and Charlotte's central dilemma. Will they summon up the courage to make a real change in their privileged yet dreary lives - after all they have nothing to lose and a everything to win - or will they continue to live a life of passive discontent, whose only comfort is their own sense of superiority?