LOST in TRANSLATION
After being stood up for weeks, I finally managed to this movie directed by Sofia Coppola, on a leap day sunday, Feb 29, which will come again 4 years afterwards ;P

This film is fine, subtle, deep and real. And it just remind me how noisy & lousy neon light Tokyo is ;) And how much we need 'only connected' more than merely 'sex', especially when you feel so lonely and just want to find someone who can understand you/talk to you in some ways only. Urban dwellers are so easily feeling lost in the metropolis and to find a easy ONS or causal sex is more easier than to find someone you are willing to talk to/willing to listen to/ willing to hang out with/willing to spend some fun times together. So that's the movie, my grade is A--.

Followings are some reviews you can find at http://www.lost-in-translation.com/home.html

- You know the sensation: It's not love, but it's some immediate awareness that the two of you may have been separated at birth, your minds operate alike, your synapses fire in the same pattern, you recognize the same enemies (many) and the same allies (few). It's you and she against the world.


- Sex, somehow, doesn't come into it. Sex, somehow, would ruin it. You can get sex anywhere. (And Bob does.) From this one, you want that precious process that E.M. Forster so wisely described as "only connect." So Bob and Charlotte connect and proceed through a number of adventures in Japan, and discover that their equal bafflement at all things Japanese is somehow a part of their bond.

- Murray certainly doesn't overdo it, but with that prehensile face, and its weird ability to project not just broad-stroke attitudes like "irony" but substates like "58 percent irony/40 percent fatigue/2 percent responsibility," he's very funny.

- The movie follows the twists and connections in Bob and Charlotte's relationship - like some trans-Atlantic phone calls, their feelings reach each other on a five-second delay. The lag time only embellishes the comedy, and the heartbreak.

- The corollary of this is that Ms. Coppola's direction is so breezily assured in its awareness of loneliness that the film could potentially be dismissed as self-consciously moody rather than registering as a mood piece.

- The film is equally shrewd about noticing the ways people can be at loose ends in their intimate relationships, not exactly ready to end things but unsure where they're headed. With a strong feel for divergent generations, "Lost" understands without having to say it that people at widely different ages can be equally uncertain about who they're supposed to be, equally impelled to question where they want to land when they grow up.

- It may or may not be romance these two are reaching for in this 21st century version of 1945's classic David Lean-directed "Brief Encounter," but they definitely yearn for something more essential: simple human connection. Coppola's formidable delicacy rules out any slam-bang emotionalism, but that doesn't lessen our involvement. What "Lost in Translation" demonstrates, among many other things, is how much weight and substance something slight can have in just the right hands.

- It's about being alone in a crowd and the power of unexpected friendships.

- Bob and Charlotte's brief encounter is built to last, if only in their memories. Before saying goodbye, they whisper something to each other that the audience can't hear. Coppola keeps her film as hushed and intimate as that whisper. Lost in Translation is found gold. Funny how a wisp of a movie from a wisp of a girl can wipe you out.
In 'Lost,' dislocated, lonely lives merge in a lovely limbo.

- It's not a love story, or, at any rate, the sort we expect from movies. It's something deeper and simpler.

- "Lost in Translation" gets more out of nothing than most movies even try.

- In a touch of irony, Lost in Translation is actually about the fragile connections that develop between people and the longing, no matter where we are, for human companionship. It is equal parts love story and droll comedy, with a splendid travelogue tossed in for good measure.

- But this isn't a "Will they or won't they?" kind of movie. Lost in Translation is less about passion and more about longing - much like life itself.

- Coppola's "Lost in Translation" who wrote the unmistakably personal and poignant script, has given Murray a great gift with this quiet, endearing comedy, in which he is more "serious" than most actors playing someone dying from a terrible disease. Bob is quietly fading away, and though Charlotte is not a cure for his malaise, she is the energy source that renews him.

- The two characters who pretty much wholly comprise writer/director Sofia Coppola's textured, thoughtful and touching "Lost in Translation" are lost indeed, seemingly good souls at different stages in life, looking for the next step, the right direction, the right connection.

- Charlotte's no longer sure whom she married. Neither is Bob. He's at one end of that bewilderment and she's at the other, both sleepless yet sleepwalking through life.

They wake each other up.

What follows is a non-affair to remember, which maintains a delicate balance between friends, lovers and something ineffably greater than either. They are made for each other in a million ways, with sex being one of the lesser ones (though that tension is ever-present).