Sofia Coppola’s terrific second film, “Lost in Translation,” is a subtle, affectionate slice-of-life comedy about the boundaries of friendship. Framed by the culture bomb of Tokyo and fueled by surprising chemistry between its two leads, “Translation” is where the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola makes good on her genetic talents.
Bill Murray is Bob Harris, a Hollywood action star whose flabby chest and sinking cheeks have forced him out of million-dollar explosions and into multi-million-dollar commercials for upscale Japanese liquor. Bob has left his children and sarcastic, home improvement-fixated wife for Tokyo and a publicity tour for the whiskey he pushes behind thick eyeliner and tired smiles.
Bob meets recent Yale graduate Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) in a hotel lounge where a red-haired chanteuse is emoting her way through “Scarborough Fair.” The sensitive, doubt-ridden Charlotte is there with her young photographer husband John (Giovanni Ribisi), but as John strikes up a friendship with a ditzy blonde actress (“Scary Movie” starlet Anna Faris), Charlotte and Bob escape to the streets and bars of Tokyo.
Nobody sleeps in “Lost in Translation.” Coppola handles the bright hustle and electric bustle of Tokyo better than any recent American stabs at Anglo-Asian culture clash. The streets look like Times Square on steroids, with bright lights and colors multiplying along streets and on buildings. In one hallucinatory scene, Charlotte watches a brontosaurus glide along through the glass face of a skyscraper.
The film is littered with background noise and dialogue that mirrors the visual pattern: bleeps and excessive bloops of a Japanese arcade, multiple languages (never subtitled), and, in one unforgettable scene, a karaoke system that plays videos of idyllic yuppies accompanied by synth Muzak.
The film’s leisurely pace and inherent inaction, coupled with the dizzying atmosphere of Toyko, creates the same heightened realism that distinguished Coppola’s first film, “The Virgin Suicides.”
As Harris, Murray continues his recent trend of playing downtrodden characters: Bob is a lonely, resigned and talented man; funny when he needs to be but colossally bummed otherwise. But though Murray seems to be garnering most of the attention for his acting in “Translation,” it’s Johansson’s brilliantly calculated performance that makes Bob worthwhile. Bookended by an emotional introduction and a sublime final scene, her turn as Charlotte is as haunting as it is touching.
While “Suicides” was a suspiciously bizarre film where humor and drama clashed uneasily to mixed results, “Translation” has more cohesion. Except for the obvious (and occasionally offensive) cultural jokes that recall Tom Selleck’s “Mr. Baseball,” “Translation” is a balanced movie, proving that Coppola’s directorial talent has matured.
Late in the film, Bob and Charlotte lie on a Tokyo hotel bed, sipping from sake boxes while watching the signature fountain scene in “La Dolce Vita,” meta-translated to suit the Americanized Japanese. They’re not lovers; they’re not slumber partiers; they’re just friends. Whether or not this is disappointing or comforting is insignificant–the power of a friendship knows no bounds.
