Lost In Translation Details

Is this really the same Bill Murray who spent decades making broad comedies such as Ghostbusters and Stripes for the world's adolescents? You'd never guess from his delicately restrained and masterful performance in Sofia Coppola's marvellous follow-up to debut movie The Virgin Suicides. He stars as world-weary film actor Bob Harris who's reluctantly staying in Japan to make a whisky commercial. There he meets, and begins to fall in love with, an unhappily married younger woman, played by Scarlett Johansson. She is equally as good as the woman trapped in a loveless marriage, and Coppola — rapidly revealing herself to be as talented as her father, Francis — wisely underlies the bittersweet soul-searching with a healthy dose of humour, that includes a standout scene featuring an overly energetic prostitute. By expertly using the neon-drenched backdrop of night-time Tokyo as an alien landscape against which the couple delicately explore each other's ambiguous feelings, this talented young director has produced a sad, funny, magical and almost irresistibly moving experience that could be the surprise package at Oscar time.

On the plus side, Murray's portrait of a tired actor going through the motions is perfect (though it's impossible to ever imagine him as the action star he's meant to be), and the brief almost-romantic encounter is treated with delicacy; on the minus side