Charming, intelligent film.
Reviewer: rileymccarthy from Atlanta, GA
Have you ever just clicked with some complete stranger? By "clicked," I don't necessarily mean in a romantic way. I mean, you go up to this person who looks troubled or smart or wise or fun, even though you don't know them. And for some reason, you're able to talk with this stranger. You talk about things that matter. You know where they are, what they're dealing with. And they talk to you like they know what you're going through and where you're going with it.
Maybe you were on vacation somewhere. Maybe it was a wrong number on a phone call. Maybe, just maybe, it was fate, giving you a hand and a person to lean on when you didn't quite know you needed it.
Now, you and this stranger share a couple enchanted moments, where it seems like someone who doesn't know you is the only one who can hear you. And when the talk ends or the enchanted time with this stranger passes, you're somehow the better for it, even though nothing particularly substantial happened.
Fate reminds you that you're not alone, and fate reminds you of the sort of wonderful person you really are, outside of all the day-to-day drama of your life or away from the minutae that surrounds your everyday existence.
In Sofia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION, two strangers, Bob and Charlotte, share that kind of connection when they both end up in a Tokyo hotel, where they don't fit in with the world around them and don't seem to belong anywhere. So they come together.
What they share is not quite a romantic love, but it is a romance. Their friendship provides them with solace, with enchanted moments. Their chats give them both the strength and the tools to deal with their real lives. They're strangers to one another, who may only know each other a week, but they understand each other at a time when both of them needed to be seen for who they were and understood.
Bob's an actor in Tokyo doing a commercial and taking a break from his exasperated wife. Charlotte's accompanying her photographer husband on a business trip - even though he leaves her alone for most of the time - because she didn't have anything better to do back home. She's in the process of discovering her identity. He's in the process of rediscovering who he is in the midst of the life he's grown tired of leading.
And they help each other.
This film is completely charming and very mature, having its characters understand and explore some fundamental aspects of human nature and identity. The film is also very funny, exploring a clash of cultures and examining the weirdness of how you can sometimes get to the heart of who you are when you're away from everything you're familiar with.
The acting, particularly from the leads, is excellent. Scarlett Johansson's character is so fully realized that you want to hug her, and Bill Murray gives the best performance of his career. The film is beautiful to look at. The story's wonderful and smart, and the script is amusing yet serious.
LOST IN TRANSLATION helps you feel better about yourself. It reminds you that there are people out there just like you, who know who you really are and where you're going.
I love this movie.
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