Movie Review by S Felce
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris, Nao Asuka
Director: Sofia Coppola
Bob and Charlotte are in Tokyo. They are both American, they are staying in the same hotel and they can’t sleep at night. Bob, a movie star in his fifties, is staying in Tokyo to film a whiskey commercial. Charlotte is in her twenties and in Japan with her photographer husband who is working on a photo shoot with a band. They are lonely, their relationships are not going well and they are both in search of some meaning to their lives. Tokyo is the third character in the story, big and chaotic when we first see it, yet unfriendly and impenetrable during Bob and Charlotte’s lonely nights.
However, there are always two different faces of a city and two different faces of a person.
One night Bob and Charlotte meet in the hotel’s bar and become friends. They start going out exploring the city. As they make friends with Tokyo they open up to us and to themselves. Tokyo doesn’t seem so cold anymore. Charlotte and Bob don’t pretend anymore to be happy when they are not. They just live for the moment – a new friend, a funky and lively city hidden between tall buildings and what it seems are endless nights.
As the title suggests, the film plays with the difficulties and unfamiliarity of being in an estranged place. Sometimes it is exactly in this confusion that one can find the real self and LOST IN TRANSLATION is the story of a man and woman who find each other while lost. It is romantic and funny. Above all it has a delicate balance between a romantic story and a melancholic drama, which is never broken.
It is an amazing little story and a truly beautiful film.
