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Lost in Translation is a slow-cooking film that at first doesn't seem as if it's going to impress, yet leaves one by its end feeling that little bit changed. The reviews of the film are everywhere at the moment, so I won't give a plot summary, but Bill Murray is quietly impressive; the hype in the press about his good placing for an Oscar this year is entirely credible. His character, Bob Harris (there were a couple of giggles in the Phoenix when his name was first given, perhaps because it's that of the veteran Radio 2 DJ) is cast adrift in Tokyo making a series of whisky commercials, and when Murray is in the mascara for a photo session his performance has eerie echoes of his Bunny Breckenridge in Ed Wood a few years ago. Where Breckenridge had learned to dramatise his isolation as an openly gay man on the fringes of 50s Hollywood, Harris is superficially a temporary misfit, visiting a country on the other side of a yawning cultural gap, but he is also unsettled within, openly questioning the state of his life later in the film; having provided his wife with a family and the means to support them, he is not sure whether he is now redundant. Unable to resolve his feelings towards his family and his marriage, he is as a result unsure what to make of his feelings towards Charlotte.
Charlotte is having another crisis; married for two years and still in her early twenties, she complains to an unheeding friend over the phone near the start of the film that she no longer recognises the man she married, a photographer called John of a similar age seemingly bent on reinventing himself to better fit with his rock star and Hollywood subjects. Charlotte is played by Scarlett Johanssen, the new young serious leading lady of the moment; on the basis of the characterisation she delivers in this film, she will have staying power.
Sofia Coppola is both writer and director of this film, and she delivers some remarkable moments. The karaoke evening, where Bob and Charlotte perform American hits at Charlotte's Japanese friends, and the aforementioned photosession where Bob is told to be like the 'Lat Pak', especially 'Sinatura', present American culture refracted through an American writer-director's impression of a Japanese lens. The film is also full of possibilities. My travelling companions on the train a few nights ago felt that the film was driven by a will-they/won't-they tension; I disagree, only because there are other male-female relationship models going through Bob and Charlotte's heads. Charlotte is certainly young enough to be Bob's daughter, and there is something of the father-daughter in the relationship, but it is the romantic potential that is uppermost. Bob's one-night stand with the jazz singer serves to protect his relationship with Charlotte from becoming a sexual involvement and from thus being belittled as a fling. Both need to know themselves and sex with someone who is not their partner would only be an escape, not a rediscovery and reconciliation.
Well, I hope that made sense...
While in Jericho (my old neighbourhood, where the cinema can be found) I discovered that the fish and chip shop, previously known as 'Chicken Barbecue', and with a Coca-Cola sign that dated it to pre-1980, has been completely revamped, with a stainless steel and mirrors interior, and renamed 'Posh Fish'. I'm not an icthyophage, but succumbed to the temptation of a regular bag of chips. The portion was huge, consistently-cooked, and served in an insulated bag that served the food well as I ate it on my way to the car. It did nothing for the cause of my losing a few pounds (I should have been mortified after Christmas to learn that I now have a 40-inch waist, but instead I was mildly perturbed) but kept me warm on a night that was colder than Oxford has known this week.
Charlotte is having another crisis; married for two years and still in her early twenties, she complains to an unheeding friend over the phone near the start of the film that she no longer recognises the man she married, a photographer called John of a similar age seemingly bent on reinventing himself to better fit with his rock star and Hollywood subjects. Charlotte is played by Scarlett Johanssen, the new young serious leading lady of the moment; on the basis of the characterisation she delivers in this film, she will have staying power.
Sofia Coppola is both writer and director of this film, and she delivers some remarkable moments. The karaoke evening, where Bob and Charlotte perform American hits at Charlotte's Japanese friends, and the aforementioned photosession where Bob is told to be like the 'Lat Pak', especially 'Sinatura', present American culture refracted through an American writer-director's impression of a Japanese lens. The film is also full of possibilities. My travelling companions on the train a few nights ago felt that the film was driven by a will-they/won't-they tension; I disagree, only because there are other male-female relationship models going through Bob and Charlotte's heads. Charlotte is certainly young enough to be Bob's daughter, and there is something of the father-daughter in the relationship, but it is the romantic potential that is uppermost. Bob's one-night stand with the jazz singer serves to protect his relationship with Charlotte from becoming a sexual involvement and from thus being belittled as a fling. Both need to know themselves and sex with someone who is not their partner would only be an escape, not a rediscovery and reconciliation.
Well, I hope that made sense...
While in Jericho (my old neighbourhood, where the cinema can be found) I discovered that the fish and chip shop, previously known as 'Chicken Barbecue', and with a Coca-Cola sign that dated it to pre-1980, has been completely revamped, with a stainless steel and mirrors interior, and renamed 'Posh Fish'. I'm not an icthyophage, but succumbed to the temptation of a regular bag of chips. The portion was huge, consistently-cooked, and served in an insulated bag that served the food well as I ate it on my way to the car. It did nothing for the cause of my losing a few pounds (I should have been mortified after Christmas to learn that I now have a 40-inch waist, but instead I was mildly perturbed) but kept me warm on a night that was colder than Oxford has known this week.
