Back in 1990, a long time before Sofia Coppola became the 32-year old Hollywood Princess of Cool she is now, the former Mrs. Jonze’s career was pronounced dead on arrival. Think back, and you’ll remember that everyone from the highest-minded film critic to the lowliest member of the popcorn-munching public, was in complete agreement – Godfather III, as Linda Blair might succinctly have put it, sucks cocks in hell.
After G3’s inglorious failure, Sofia herself was to bear the brunt of the understandable sense of abject disappointment. As her father Francis Ford Coppola’s last-minute replacement for Winona Ryder, Sofia was mauled for her performance as the Corleone-who-would-be-Godmother, and her very name became a by-word for failed nepotism, like Sean Haughey or Jordi Cruyff.
Thankfully for Sofia, she survived and went on to direct the rapturously received The Virgin Suicides. And thankfully for us, she’s followed that up with the sublime Lost In Translation, a film so brilliantly conceived and executed that it makes you want to cartwheel out of the cinema. Ostensibly, it’s a wistful mediation on an unfulfilled and incongruous romantic brush between Bill Murray’s washed-up Hollywood action hero and Scarlett Johansson’s confused young bride in a Tokyo hotel.
She’s going through a mid-twenty-something life-crisis as she struggles to find her place in the world, while forlornly awaiting the return of her workaholic photographer husband. Bill’s in town to capitalise on his fading celebrity by shooting whiskey commercials, while his long-standing wife guilt-trips him down the phoneline.
Drawn together by insomnia and the alien, neon hum of their environs, our odd couple’s blossoming relationship unfolds in a manner which recalls Before Sunrise (can there be higher praise?) with an added touch of screwball comedy.
Regardless of how Tom Cruise looks in battle-armour, Murray simply has to take the Best Actor Oscar for a role that not only includes a touching (no, really) karaoke rendition of Roxy Music’s ‘More Than This’, but which remarkably manages to harness his deadpan gifts to greater effect than his even most accomplished turns (Rushmore, Ghostbusters and The Royal Tenenbaums).
If all that wasn’t enticement enough, there’s Coppola’s fantastic depiction of Japan. Here The Land Of The Rising Sun is less like a foreign country – as the great Ian Rush once described Italy – and more like a different planet in a galaxy far, far away. Yet, despite the weirdness of the place, with its strange virtual golf games, fucked-up comic-book porn and ‘Pizza Of Death’ T-shirts, Coppola finds a rare poetic beauty in among the plastic cherry blossoms.
Honestly, if there are many films as good as this in 2004, we promise not to even complain about the Martin Lawrence movies. And as for Ms. Coppola, wherever she might be – we’re awfully glad you found your place in the world. Shoot on, sister.