Review of LOST IN TRANSLATION

"The power of Lost in Translation is in the way it sneaks up on you. At the end of the film, there's a montage of Tokyo as a character heads to the airport that captures the feeling of leaving a place after a vacation. There's a dreamlike ambiance to the film that puts us in the middle of the languid partying and detached sightseeing of its lead characters as they meet, hang out, talk, and find common ground on which to connect. The film is about barriers of language, age, relationships, culture, and education, and they serve two dramatic purposes. When confronted with these barriers, there's the comedy of being uncomfortable with them, but the film goes beyond that comic convention to allow the characters a chance to try and break those barriers down, whether it be in the partaking of honest discussions, too much sake, or bad karaoke. The title hints at the theme of barriers, and it obviously serves as a description of the situation at hand—two Americans who only speak English in Tokyo. Writer/director Sofia Coppola is getting at something deeper with the title, though, and it's that somewhere along the way, these two people's dreams have been lost in life's expectations."

Mark's Full Review

This review is like a dessert after the main course - it blends and wraps up a rather evocative entre even though the specific details of the main features of the meal are all fused into blended sensations, this sweet wrap up allows the wine to breath and reflect on the finer distinctions of the movie.