Lost in Translation

2003 Comedy Drama

After making a striking directorial debut with her screen adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola offers a story of love and friendship blooming under unlikely circumstances in this comedy drama. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a well-known American actor whose career has gone into a tailspin; needing work, he takes a very large fee to appear in a commercial for Japanese whiskey to be shot in Tokyo. Feeling no small degree of culture shock in Japan, Bob spends most of his non-working hours at his hotel, where he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) at the bar. Twentysomething Charlotte is married to John (Giovanni Ribisi), a successful photographer who is in Tokyo on an assignment, leaving her to while away her time while he works. Beyond their shared bemusement and confusion with the sights and sounds of contemporary Tokyo, Bob and Charlotte share a similar dissatisfaction with their lives; the spark has gone out of Bob's marriage, and he's become disillusioned with his career. Meanwhile, Charlotte is puzzled with how much John has changed in their two years of marriage, while she's been unable to launch a creative career of her own. Bob and Charlotte become fast friends, and as they explore Tokyo, they begin to wonder if their sudden friendship might be growing into something more. more..

Director: Sofia Coppola

Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris, Akiko Takeshita

Reviews

  • The fact that this kind of serious material ends up playing puckishly funny as well as poignant is a tribute both to Coppola and to her do-or-die decision to cast Murray in the lead role.

    Kenneth Turan - Los Angeles Times

    26 April 2013

  • What's astonishing about Sofia Coppola's enthralling new movie is the precision, maturity, and originality with which the confident young writer-director communicates so clearly in a cinematic language all her own.

    Lisa Schwarzbaum - Entertainment Weekly

    26 April 2013

  • A delicate, beautifully observed study of impossible romance, Lost in Translation is one of the best films this year.

    Edward Guthmann - The San Francisco Chronicle

    26 April 2013

  • Giddily funny in a singularly American idiom, and shot, by Lance Acord, with an eagle eye for cultural absurdities, Ms. Coppola's film is also a meditation on love and longing, shot through with a sensibility that's all the more surprising for being so unfashionably tender.

    Joe Morgenstern - The Wall Street Journal

    26 April 2013

  • Longer on atmosphere and observation than on story, but you don't mind: Coppola maintains her quietly charged tone with a certainty that would be unbelievable in a second film if you didn't suspect genetics had a hand.

    Ty Burr - The Boston Globe

    26 April 2013

Awards

  • Movie of the Year

    AFI Awards (2004)

  • Best Writing, Original Screenplay

    Academy Awards (2004)

  • Best Edited Feature Film - Comedy or Musical

    American Cinema Editors (2004)

     
  • Sofia Coppola

    American Screenwriters Association (2004)

     
  • Contemporary Film

    Art Directors Guild (2004)