In a Lonely Place

SOFIA COPPOLA'S TOKYO ODYSSEY, LOST IN TRANSLATION

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In The Virgin Suicides.Sofia Coppola captured the fecund dreaminess of a midwestem suburb, circa 1978, with a sureness of style and tone remarkable for a first-time director, even one whose father delivered three or four of the greatest American movies ever made. (If Daddy helped her steer, he did so with a steadier hand than has been in evidence in his own recent projects.) Her second film. Lost in Translation, based on her original screenplay, is another mood bath, immersing us this time in the sterile dreaminess of contemporary Tokyo as experienced by a pair of dislocated, jet-lagged Americans. Bill Murray, in beatenpuppy mode, plays Bob Harris, a movie star in town by himself to shoot a Japanese-whiskey commercial. He's bored with work and drifting through a stale marriage, and when his anarchic sense of humor does surface, it seems to bubble up from a lonely place fathoms deep. In the hotel bar one night he meets Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte (the character isn't given a last name), a young wife who has tagged along on a working trip with her photographer husband. While he's off shooting Japanese rock stars, she mostly sits at the window of her room staring out at a vast, alien city; the sky is bright, but she's lost in the exquisite depressive fog that seems to go with being 23 and "creative" but otherwise having no idea what you want to do with your life. It's midlife crisis meets quarterlife crisis: with too much time on their hands, the principals strike up one of those intense and magical traveling friendships that would never ever work back home. They have a tenderly awkward chemistry, each sly, each easily wounded, but don't expect huge sparks: Lost in Translation isn't about catharsis or transcendence; it's about small, sad, lingering epiphanies—the kind of quiet little movie where a closing elevator door can break your heart. (Rating: ★★★1/2)

BRUCE HANDY