Lost in Translation

[helenic]

I'd heard about this film, of course, for months - the consensus seemed to be that it was very good, although I can't actually remember what anyone said about it. It was quirky, my dad told me, and it didn't really have a plot, but he liked it, it had affected him. We watched it curled on our new white sofa swigging Stoli out of a single icy glass, passing it back and forth between us.

How can I describe this film? It's a sketch, it's Lamb's Fear of Fours translated into cheekbones and cityscapes and cigarettes. The script is minimalist, consisting mostly of the word "okay", as far as I remember, and yet strangely moving: there are lines that stay with you. Charlotte: "I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses... taking pictures of your feet... " Scarlet Johanssen gives an intelligent performance, as well as having one of the cutest bottoms in cinema, and Bill Murray, whom I'm not usually a fan of, is at his best - glum, ironic, and very genuine. The quality of their relationship is fascinating. Is there a real romantic interest there? Or is it just that they're the only people in that city they have any rapport with at all? (I'm always intrigued by intense, not-quite-sexual friendships over big age gaps; it was one of the things I loved about Ladies in Lavender, which I saw before Christmas, when Ursula sat by the sea with Andre, and he leaned against her knee, and, hesitantly, not quite daring to betray the true depth of her feelings, she allowed herself to gently stroke his hair. That tension.)

It's an extremely pretty film, and that's at least half the reason I like it - I covet those flowers, her pink wig, the bamboo cups they drink wine from - but it also seemed to be saying the same things I've been trying to say for years. About the mystery of communication, that moment where an intimacy flares between the worlds of two separate people, creates a spark. Bob and Charlotte's conversations throughout are halting, hesitant, nervous: they're both speaking English in the middle of Tokyo, but they're still not quite speaking the same language. (And oh, the title is a pun on so many levels.) And yet, there's that connection. In a way the communication that's illustrated between them isn't about what they're saying at all; it's something deeper than that, more inexplicable.

And then there are those long, wordless scenes, following each of them as they explore Tokyo, their wondering reactions to things. Is it about Japan - the landscape, the beautifully observed cultural differences - or is it about what's inside your own head? Or is it about how you see the world, how your internal universe relates to the one around you? What happens when yours encounters the universes of others, whether they collide or miss each other completely or manage, tentatively reaching-out feelers to each other, to communicate. Is it about how the world gets lost in translation as we perceive it? Or is this not the intention of the film-makers at all, but what's in my own head, what I'm bringing to it? Was what they were trying to say lost in translation, overwhelmed by my own themes and preoccupations...?

I was looking for an aesthetically pleasing screenshot to post in order to give you those of you who haven't seen it some sort of visual feel for the film. Those evocative, pale-lit shots of hotel rooms: Charlotte sprawled across white duvets; sitting, hands wrapped around knees, watching the cityscape below her; sitting up in baths, huge headphones enfolding her, watching the city, always, through those huge fields of glass hanging over Tokyo. And the long shots of her and Bob, camera poised above them as they talk, unmoving for far longer than you expect.Those delicate pink sprays of flowers; the temple; even the karaoke room, blue-strobe-lit, curving out of the wall high above the street. These were the images that stayed with me. But a google search revealled only shots of Bob, or of the city, or of them in the bar, dark, amber-lit.

These are from the theatrical trailer: I wanted to show you those wide pale shots of her, motionless, that haunting use of colour.