15/1/04

A story of two lonely strangers living in a hotel on the other side of the world from home. Charlotte and Bob are in Tokyo; she at a loose end, having followed her new husband on a photography job with no role for herself yet. Bob is being paid vast amounts to appear in a whiskey advert; his film career has dried up these days. His wife has chosen to stay at home with the kids.

Both of them seem stranded in the hotel and in Tokyo. Neither speaks Japanese and both are suffering insomnia through jet lag. They find each other as fellow inmates and begin to spend more and more of their short stay together.

Nothing much happens, but then the mood of the film is directed at the alienation and isolation of the main characters who are suffering the brain-crunching numbness of jet-lag in a country that is totally foreign to their experience. It is in the skill of Sofia Coppola as the director, that she captures this jolted sense of unreality and suspended time. It does mean that, as an unfortunate consequence, I felt jetlagged and unreal for the length of this film.

With the help of two understated and realistic performances from the lead actors a gentle story of unconsummated love is drawn out in a series of episodes. We come to feel great empathy for these two people trapped in circumstances they feel unable to do anything about. The ending entirely refuses to give any hints as to what happens next, leaving the audience with the satisfaction of having to work out the options for themselves.

It is a moving, if uncomfortable film that can be difficult to appreciate whilst watching it. Yet it remains in the head with a bittersweet melancholia for some time afterwards. An acquired taste of a film.