Z/Web

Author: Sophia Coppolla

Director: Sophia Coppolla

Wow, what a terrific film! I’d been hearing good things about it but no one explained the plot so I didn’t really know what it was about. It turns out it has no plot! Well, there’s a shell of one. There two main characters. Bill Murray plays an American movie star visiting Tokyo to shoot a commercial for an ad campaign. In the same hotel is a young woman, married just two years and recently graduated from college with a degree in philosophy, who’s dissatisfied and wondering what life is all about. Bill’s disolutioned and using the trip to escape from his hectic family life (he’s married with kids), and when the two meet, they discover a connection. It’s all very sweet and innocent, but there’s a charged undercurrent in every scene the two share. Will they or won’t they? That’s the story. Having it set in Japan, where there’s humor in cultural differences, mistranslations, English that is as incomprehensible as Japanese, adds to the romantic melodrama. Oddly, nothing much happens in the film, and while the two ask many interesting questions, nothing is resolved or explained. No sitcom 22-minute resolution here. Yet it’s still a fascinating film. That’s mostly because of Scarlet Johanssen, who is going to be a huge star. She’s marvelous and carries every scene she’s in. Many scenes have no dialog and just focus on her, bored in her hotel room (her husband’s working), staring out the window, and yet somehow she makes that visually compelling. It’s not just that’s she pretty; it’s that she’s pretty with a vulnerability that draws us in, allowing us to see the gears turning in her head. Very impressive performance. Overall, this is a surprisingly entertaining film. It’s difficult to describe: you just need to see it. It doesn’t sound particularly interesting or compelling, but it was far better than the more lurid