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LOST IN TRANSLATION              This powerful and affecting film is not to be confused with the book of the same name by Nicole Mones, about the experiences of an American interpreter in China.              Here, the setting is Tokyo, and the protagonist, Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray), is a middle-aged American film actor (married with kids) whose star is waning and has had to resort to making commercials for Santori Whiskey in Japan.  The film takes place in the elegant Park Hyatt Hotel and centers on the bewilderment, frustrations, sense of cultural and linguistic isolation and loneliness that he experiences in a totally foreign and unfamiliar environment.  He meets his soul-mate, a young American woman, Charlotte, played by Scarlett Johansson, whose husband (or boyfriend) is a photographer busy working on a job in this city.              Against the backdrop of the huge, urban juggernaut that is modern Tokyo, the film gives a credible and often humorous portrayal of a man who is totally ill-prepared for his stay in the city, without even a smattering of the language and no preparation in how to handle cultural differences or social mores.  Bob’s frequent conversations by phone to his wife in the States seem to offer little comfort, and he is drawn to Charlotte, who is estranged from her husband and his friends in Tokyo and experiencing the same isolation of the “Gaijin.” The ensuing, quietly growing relationship is depicted with sensitivity and a light touch.  Thrown together by their isolation, they develop a warmth and affection for each other, which the audience can feel as powerfully as the sexual tension between them.              There are many scenes which depict the garish, honky-tonk and unsavory aspects of Tokyo life, anything from pin-ball parlors to squalid bars and strip joints.  Even the Japanese, who have no language problems and no trouble fitting in, seem to have been reduced to a state of isolation, loneliness and alienation by the overly-automated, high-tech and impersonal nature of the city.  Ultimately, the film seems to evoke the loneliness of the human condition, and a gnawing melancholy pervades it.  The city and its people are portrayed in an unflattering light, particularly the boorishness of people in the business and entertainment industries, some of them stereotyping Americans in a totally crass and uninformed way.  This makes it easy for the director to make the protagonists’ chance encounter growing into a budding relationship plausible, but in doing so she (Sofia Coppola, who also wrote the screenplay) has had to resort to first stereotyping and caricaturizing the Japanese.                         For all that, the film has some quite funny bits and also some soaring, very exciting musical scores to match the energy and dynamism of this great city, and those were a pleasure to listen to.                                                                                                                                                                         Jeffrey Tao Return to Home