Lost in Translation and Antonioni: Sofia Coppola’s Examination of Eros in Decline

Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is a lyrical poem about isolation. The characters that inhabit her story are literally lost. The film is not a standard Hollywood film. In basic estimation, very little actually happens within the film. But that “very little” is in relation to typical Hollywood plotting. Instead, Coppola has created a piece of art that harkens back to the work of the European art cinema of the 60’s. Specifically, this paper will analyze the connections between Lost in Translation and the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, and his film L’Avventura.

In 2004, Sofia Coppola was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Lost in Translation. This is, on the surface, ironic, for, as Wendy Haslem writes, “In superficial terms, Lost in Translation seems to be a film in which nothing much happens” (2004). The film is essentially a collection of scenes that evoke a mood, and not a formal A to B to C plot. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is staying in Tokyo while here husband works as a photographer for a record label and Bob (Bill Murray) is in town to promote Santori Whiskey. Both of them are suffering from extreme jet lag, which robs them of sleep. More importantly, both characters find themselves in existential crisis.

Charlotte is unhappy with her marriage. As she tells a friend back home over the phone, “I don’t know. I went to this shrine today…there were these monks and they were chanting. And I didn’t feel anything. You know…I don’t know. I even tried ikebana. And John is using these hair products. I just, I don’t know who I married.” This dialogue, on the surface, seems rather vague and understated. We know that what she is saying is important, a marriage seems to be at stake, but it is spoken in such a fragmentary way that it is easy to forget. This is part of Coppola’s strategy. This is not a film in which you can turn off your brain and be shuffled along inside a vacuous story. You must be involved. You must be active. The story is told in nuances. These nuances add together to create a portrait. When Charlotte says she “didn’t feel anything”, it is an existential exclamation. She wants to feel, whether it is through religion or for her man. In the hope that art will bring her resonance, she tries ikebana, but this is given so little attention in dialogue that we know it failed. Finally, she adds a rather interesting, and out of place anecdote about her husband. His use of hair products is at once distressing and enlightening for Charlotte. It is such a little observation, but it rocks her to her core. The many she married, in her mind, was different. She was hopeful for life. She had yet to graduate from college and the future was bright, not the grey hotel room she is stuck in. Now she is alone and without purpose.

For Bob, the future is even more disturbing, for he is at least twice the age of Charlotte. A once promising career has degenerated into whiskey advertisements over seas. As he says, he could be doing a play somewhere. His marriage is slowly dissolving. It is interesting the way Coppola presents Bob’s marriage. Our first introduction to Lydia, his wife, is a note from her that tells him he forgot his son’s birthday. As the film progresses, we will side with Bob against Lydia, but this note stays in our mind. The relative ease with which he sleeps with the hotel’s lounge singer tells us he probably wasn’t the most faithful of husbands. And yet, he seems to be trying. He wants to be involved with his kids. He even wants to reconnect with his wife. In his most telling scene, Bob talks to his wife on the phone. She hangs up the phone before he can say, “I love you.” Instead, the line is spoken into dead air.

In many ways, these characters come straight out of a Michelangelo Antonioni film. In an interview with Greg Allen, Sofia said, “I definitely watched certain movies when I was working on this: L'Avventura, and on the plane on the way to Tokyo, Roman Holiday was playing, and I remember thinking, oh there's something related to that” (2003). It is with the Antonioni’s L’Avventura that I find the most interesting connections. Antonioni’s style and thematic elements provide a new way of approaching Lost in Translation and illuminate the cine-literacy of Coppola.

The Antonionian character is lost, but privileged. They come comprise the upper class, or at least nouveau riche. “These terms struggle to characterize a life lacking in purpose, in passion, in zest, in a sense of community, in ordinary human responsiveness, in the ability to communicate, in short, a life of spiritual vacuity” (Chatman, 55). This perfectly expresses Bob and Charlotte. Charlotte expresses this very subjectivity when she explains that she witnessed monks chanting without feeling anything. Bob wears this on his face. He hardly smiles, and when he does, it feels forced. He is incapable of talking to his wife, and when he tried to express himself, it comes out in fragments and against dead air.

Many people failed to grasp Lost in Translation because the relationship between Bob and Charlotte is not obvious. This is a very de-romanticized romance. Standard moviegoers wanted to see the two get together in a physical way. As we shall see later in this paper, sex would have been the conclusion to the normal Hollywood “romantic comedy”. Instead, Coppola gives us an Antonionian vision of love. Antonioni described L’Avventura as a film about the sickness of Eros. In his statement at Cannes in 1960, Michelangelo himself writes, “Why do you think eroticism is so prevalent today in our literature, our theatrical shows, and elsewhere? It is a symptom of the emotional sickness of our time. But this preoccupation with eroticism would not become obsessive if Eros were healthy, that is, if it were kept within human proportions. But Eros is sick; man is uneasy, something is bothering him. And whenever something bothers him, man reacts, but he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy” (2). Coppola’s film definitely endorses this philosophy but her characters react to it in a different way. Whereas Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and Claudia (Monica Vitti) consummate their loveless affair, Bob and Charlotte only go so far as a kiss. And even that kiss is open to interpretation. Is it romantic? Friendly? Sexual? Will the two ever see each other again? Coppola doesn’t tell us. Regardless, both are disillusioned with love. Their marriages are falling apart and they are alone in one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Whereas the characters in L’Avventura react against the sickness of Eros with sex, Bob and Charlotte reject it. But this rejection is not complete. In one of the opening scenes, Bob is sent a prostitute by a businessman he is working for. Instead of having sex, the two fumble around in miscommunication and end up falling on the floor. In another sequence, Bob and Charlotte meet with friends at a strip club called Orange. Charlotte enters the club to find Bob staring at a stripper with a blank, empty look on his face. The two instantly decide to leave the club. This is exemplary of the sickness of Eros. The entire sequence is devoid of emotion. It is cold and destitute. Their decision is an open rejection of this impulse towards eroticization. They are sickened by the loveless and “erotic” display put on by women for men.

Their relationship also works in rejection to this tendency. For me, Bob and Charlotte are nonsexual characters. They are searching for connection on an emotional level, not a physical one. The most erotic act in the film, as described by Haslem, is a simple moment in which Bob touches Charlotte’s foot (4). Calling this scene erotic is a long, long stretch. Instead, the touch is a symbol of their newfound human connection. It is innocent; an innocent connection that directly fights against the tendency to react badly, “only on erotic impulse”. In an Antonionian sense, Bob and Charlotte have moved backwards in time to a point where Eros was healthy and his physical manifestation was restrained, but meaningful.

Of course, Coppola does not let her characters of the hook. In the most painful and disappointing scene in the film, Bob sleeps with the lead singer of the lounge act Sausalito. As we see him awaken, we know he regrets it. We understand the impact even more when Charlotte comes to the door inviting him for lunch, and realizes that another woman is in his room. In the context of the film, she should have no reason to be upset by his affair. Both characters are married and their relationship his purely platonic. But she is upset and it is because they were both in the same boat. They were fighting the sickness of Eros and the tendency of society to indulge in erotic and impulsive acts. However, both characters overcome this setback in the films stunningly beautiful conclusion.

Up to this point, both Lost in Translation and L’Avventura could be described as melancholic, even depressing films. But they both conclude on an image of hope. In L’Avventura, Sandro sits on a bench alone, crying. Claudia comes up behind him, and in what seems like five minutes, contemplates how to respond. Finally, she places her hand on Sandro’s head, a beautiful moment of tenderness and innocent. The two are finally together, connected, in a way that is not sexualized. The image gives us hope that the sickness of Eros can be overcome.


Lost in Translation ends in an eerily similar fashion, in a sense so close we must look to L’Avventura to understand the message Sofia is presenting. While he is in his car heading towards the airport, Bob sees Charlotte walking away on a crowded city street. He asks the driver to stop, and proceeds down the street. He catches up to her and the two embrace. They hug and Bob whispers something into her ear, and kisses her on the cheek. They separate and he walks back to his car with a smile on his face, Charlotte left with tears, tears of joy, in her eyes. Both scenes are shot in a similar manner. Both employ a close-up of the couple and then a long shot putting them in perspective. In fact, the visual similarity is prevalent throughout the film, and is in need of examination.


Coppola draws much of visual construction from the work of Antonioni. His amazingly concise framing marks Antonioni’s work. Every shot could be framed in a museum. In L’Avventura, there is a great focus on the terrain and natural elements. This gives the film an amazing sense of space and isolation. Characters are often specks on the volcanic terrain of an island. When we do finally enter the city, it is often empty, and again the characters seem miniscule in comparison to the massive architecture. This style is essential to the themes and ideas Antonioni presents. His characters are isolated and in existential crisis. They appear miniscule because they feel miniscule. Often times, characters gaze out into the existential void. They are trying to find their lost friend Anna but it is clear they will never find her. Their gaze is a search for meaning, not a single person. Often times, there aren’t even characters present. Instead, Antonioni focuses on the vastness of physical space. “When the people are present, they often don’t seem there for us, staring out the window at their reality within what is for us a framed image complete with onscreen spectator looking out at the world through their own frame…here on-and off-screen subjects gaze ahead at the same vista” (Ford, 5).

In Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola presents a very similar visual style. Her style, however, may be even more isolated and depressing, despite the fact that it takes place in a large city. In fact, it is the vastness, the sheer population numbers of Tokyo that reinforce the isolation of Bob and Charlotte. Visually, there are people everywhere but the characters are unable to make the connections they so desperately seek. Writing about L’Avventura, Hamish Ford notes, “The island may be a dramatic and photogenic space, but the any-space-whatever is defined less by its actual content than the question of whether it is an identifiable and centered space…or an opening to the decentred ambiguity and confronting temporality of the world” (6). Charlotte travels the city with a look of confusion on her face. It is not only that the land and languages are alien. It is that the human race is alien. It is as if she is visiting the zoo, seeing how a gorilla acts, lives, exists for the first time. Like Antonioni, Coppola often positions Charlotte in her hotel room, gazing out over downtown Tokyo.


Johansson is shot out of focus to begin, forcing us to view the monstrous city she herself is looking at. Finally, the camera refocuses on Charlotte. She looks sad and depressed at her inability to connect when it should be so easy.
This floating action is often in the form of characters being forced into simply looking and thinking…in Antonioni, this epistemologically impoverished but very open gaze is both directed outwards upon the world, and internalized as characters attempt to reconcile the difficult thought which this new seeing generates with the tired emotional investments of their bodies. Here both the seen and the unseen gaze seek the lost “self” rather than the maternal or erotic “other” (Ford, 5).

Obviously, Ford’s, really Deleuze’s, argument is just as applicable to Lost in Translation. Charlotte’s eyes are constantly searching. In the bar, it is this search that brings her to Bob. She sees him and something about his deadpan expression resonates within her. They both share the same existential void and it is through each other that their lives can find meaning. Their eye matches contain nothing of the Gaze purported by Laura Mulvey. Instead, it is really a gaze at the self, with a different face, name, and gender.

Coppola’s editing is also greatly influenced by Antonioni. L’Avventura is remarkable in the way it displaces time and location. Shots linger longer than they should, forcing us to deal with the weight of time. Many of his scenes contain action we would not expect to be in the film, and leave out parts we would. In the opening act of the film, we, as the audience, often become lost on the island. Antonioni breaks the 180˚ rule leaving the audience confused about the spatial relations of characters (Chatman, 128). While Coppola does not go to this extent, the film does approach a dream like state as the audience is presented with essentially unconnected scenes. Coppola does give us the advantage of a temporal grounding, clearly indicating morning and night. However, we still have no grasp on the amount of time that has passed or how long these characters have been in Tokyo. By the end of the film, we feel as though we have been in the city for much longer than is possible. Days begin to run together because no single event distinguishes one day from the next. Coppola is content to give us relatively benign happenings in these characters lives, like Charlotte stubbing her toe or Bob sitting on his bed in a bathrobe. There is no continuity of action. Events often go from place to place without a logical connection. “Nonoccurences these may be, but they are very resonant ones. They reveal what her life and, to a great extent, our own lives are like – what they are ‘about’. Their very inconclusiveness seems to be a profound part of the truth of the representation” (Chatman, 55).

Sofia has proven to be one of the most creative young writer-directors working in Hollywood today. She is creating challenging films that provide a unique vision of the world, especially in comparison to her Hollywood counter-parts. Her knowledge and understanding of great cinema of the past allows her to create work of depth and meaning. Her work Lost in Translation draws upon the work of Michelangelo Antonioni in depicting a world of sickened Eros, but one in which there is hope. Her film is funny and emotional and her vision is unique in its refusal to pacify the audience with a standardized romantic comedy plotting. Instead, she creates a nuanced film that activates the viewer and forces them to read between the lines, to study faces and mise-en-scéne to gain insight into the psyche of the characters on screen.

The Revenge Genre: Experimentation, Violence, and the Underlying Meaning

William Shakespeare made revenge a staple of pop culture when he penned Hamlet roughly 400 years ago. In the cinema, revenge has found its way into nearly every genre and time period. In the revenge narrative, the main character begins demoralized or on the verge of death and spends the rest of the film seeking justice. Revenge films within the last ten years have taken that formula and mutated it into something entirely new. Modern revenge films often play with narrative structure to create an entirely different arc. These films rely on flashbacks, flash-forwards, narrative reversal, and discontinuity to create a fresh and exciting take on the revenge genre. This study will focus on The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999), Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002), Oldboy (Chan-wook Park, 2003), and Kill Bill: Volumes I and II (Quentin Tarantino, 2003/2004). These films provide a diverse examination of the revenge film in a global sphere and illustrate the transformation the genre has undertaken in response to a rapidly changing society. This paper will describe the basic conditions inherent in the revenge film and the ways in which these films modify, mutate, or abandon those conditions to create an entirely new kind of revenge narrative.

The revenge narrative is one of the most simplified in all of cinema. The main character is wronged, often in a brutal way, and spends to rest of the film seeking justice. The revenge film is often extremely violent. It uses the initial attack or wronging to justify the main characters sadistic revenge. Garry Gillard writes, “The idea of revenge not only allows filmmakers to play with ‘relative moral values’, it also provides a very useful structure for the narrative. There is a clear goal…” (116). Often times, exemplified in the rape-revenge sub genre, the act of revenge is satisfying only if it exceeds the violence of the original act. In the brutal murder of a one-time attacker, closure can be gained. Sometimes this revenge can be psychological, but more often than not it is physical in nature. While this is the general revenge plot, it can often be modified to fit into other, pre-existing genres. Tales of revenge can be found as sub-genres of heist, gangster, romantic comedy, horror, and action adventure films. This allows the revenge film to take on many shapes and colors that demands a creative storyteller.

Modern revenge films have increasingly relied on unconventional storytelling. The narrative is often disjointed or told in reverse. Most famously, Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film Memento presents its narrative in two distinct strands: one that travels chronologically backwards and one that travels forward until the two meet. To justify the technique, Nolan’s protagonist suffers from short-term memory loss. Each segment represents the amount the character can actually remember. While the narrative structure is radical, the story it tells is straightforward. Leonard (Guy Pierce) awoke one night to find his wife being raped. The attackers killed his wife and smashed his head, leading to his condition. This general plot highlights a general trend in the revenge narrative. More and more the narrative focuses on a man avenging an act committed against someone he loved, which differs with the traditional rape-revenge films (I Spit on Your Grave) which focus on the woman. In Memento, Irréversible, and The Limey, men hunt down men who raped or killed a loved one.

Irréversible, by Gaspar Noé, follows in the path of Memento by presenting its narrative in reverse order. As with the previous film, Irréversible is the story of a woman’s rape and her boyfriend’s quest to kill her attacker. By presenting the story in reverse order, we witness the vengeful act first without understanding what it is in response to. With this, Noé directly challenges the view expressed by Garry Gillard. The act of vengeance, the traditional conclusion in the revenge narrative, is presented first. In Irréversible, the act is amongst the most brutal displays of filmic violence I have ever seen: a man’s face is literally beaten to pieces by a fire extinguisher. Noé has yet to show us the equally brutal rape scene that has caused the attack. This forces the audience to view the act of revenge for what it is: savage and senseless. To correspond with this display of insane rage, Noé films the sequence in a dizzyingly long single take. The camera spins and turns and snakes its way through an underground gay club called The Rectum. Literally, the scene becomes nauseating to watch.

Presenting the film in reverse order also serves a much more important purpose. The film opens with a character uttering the line “Time Destroys Everything” and this line is flashed on the screen at the conclusion. The reverse narrative order directly confronts the traditional Hollywood mode of storytelling. Eugenie Brinkema writes, “The classical Hollywood forward narration is a method of annihilating the past, which is effortlessly forgotten as the film replaces every moment with the more exciting, more eventful, more desired future (where the hero wins the prize, gets the girl, etc.)” (43). In Irréversible, the future is constantly reinforced as the film ticks on. When we finally witness the brutal rape, it only causes us to think of the subsequent murder. When we find out that Alex (Monica Bellucci) is pregnant, it forces us to wonder if she will still be able to have the child after her rape. While the actions in the film slowly become less eventful, they gain more meaning and resonance. The film offers us a solution to the classical Hollywood narrative that does destroy everything (Brinkema, 41).

Kill Bill also presents its narrative in a disjointed manner. Whereas the chronological disunity in Memento and Irréversible serve a direct purpose to the story itself, the same is not true for Tarantino’s film. The film could have been told in chronological order and it would not have changed a thing. The story, as presented, begins with the attack on Beatrix (Uma Thurman) and ends with her killing Bill (David Carradine). The sequence of the killings in between does not matter, and thus, Tarantino moves them around as he sees fit. Tarantino is more concerned with stylistic panache than the philosophy of narrative structure.

The Limey, by Steven Soderbergh, presents one of the most interesting takes on the revenge narrative. As opposed to the previous three films discussed, The Limey follows are rather basic arc. The story is told chronologically, aside from a few, short flashbacks. Soderbergh, however, is not content to let the film play out in a basic manner. Instead, he uses editing to manipulate time and space. Conversations will flow in a natural way, but the images will cut between two people conversing on a porch, in a car, by the beach, etc. This rapid translocation plays with the audience’s sense of space and time (Goss, 241). Soderbergh said, “I could get away with a certain amount of abstraction because the backbone of the movie is so straight” (Johnston). This narrative device puts us directly into the character of Wilson (Terrence Stamp). He has been imprisoned for most of his life and has journeyed to Los Angeles to avenge the murder of his daughter. By playing with space and time, we understand the sheer vastness of Los Angeles, especially for a man newly released from jail. More than anything, Soderbergh uses a straight genre to experiment with narrative structure and the boundaries of storytelling.

As we have seen, the revenge genre provides a perfect space for filmmakers to play with storytelling strategy and film chronology. At a more basic level, however, these films all share one thing in common. They are all exceedingly violent. In fact, the revenge genre seems to advocate the use of violence as a way to gain a proper amount of retribution. The more violent the conclusion, the more satisfied the main character is. These films provide a variety of displays of violence that adopt, and in some ways co-opt the traditional spectacle. “Movies call upon us to imagine that film violence is real violence, that no barrier separates us from the world on film, and that is one key to the pleasure we receive from them” (Rothman, 44). The violence inherent in The Limey most adequately matches this criterion. Most of the violence occurs off-screen, but when it does occur on-screen, it is quick and realistic. In the films climax, Wilson chases Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) across a beach covered in rocks. As Valentine runs, he slips and snaps his ankle and the bone pokes through his flesh. We, the audience, automatically cringe at the injury. As Wilson approaches him, that cringe turns towards satisfaction because we realize he has gotten what he deserved.

Kill Bill approaches violence in a different manner. The film is so over-the-top that the audience is effectively distanced from the images onscreen. Beatrix uses her Hanzo sword to dismember and maim everyone in her path. Blood shoots out of the wound with such ferocity that the audience cannot help but laugh. The film’s goriest segment is done in animation, creating another barrier that separates the audience from the violence on-screen.

Irréversible pushes Rothman’s argument to its breaking point. The violence displayed in the film is so realistic that audiences were revolted by it. Critic Stephen Rea, in his one star review, wrote, “Before long, someone's getting his head bashed in - literally, with a fire extinguisher. The body jerks on the floor in a bloody pulp, and the audience, I dare say, experiences similar sensations” (Rea). While the merits of Rea’s distaste for this scene are up for debate, the fact remains that Noé has created a piece of work that challenges the typical Hollywood spectacle of violence. He presents violence and dwells upon it, forcing the audience to soak in every aspect; forcing them to deal with the impact of what is being presented. Whether they are embracing violence or co-opting it, modern directors use the revenge paradigm as a test for the aesthetic possibilities, positive or negative, of violent acts.

Up to this point, this paper has analyzed the revenge genre is a strictly filmic way. What is also interesting about the rather simple revenge genre is the way these film-makes have embedded themes and ideas that reflect society at large. Oldboy, directed by Chan-wook Park, is an unconventional and exciting addition to the revenge genre. The film is the story of Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi) who is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years. After 15 years, he is released and told he has five days to enact revenge. Speaking about working within the revenge genre, director Chan-wook Park explained that people, in South Korea and elsewhere, are forced to increasingly hide their rage. They are losing outlets through which they can express the anger building up in them. Therefore, they blame other people for their problems instead of looking within (Hollywood Reporter). In the film, the villain Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu) holds Dae-Su captive because of a rumor he started during high school. The man never came to grips with his own problems and projected them on to a classmate.

The Limey offers a much different societal criticism. Brian Michael Goss argues that the film is a subtle examination of class striations. The antagonist in the film, Valentine, is a rich record mogul who has used the talent of others to accumulate wealth. In direct opposition, capitalism creates a lower class of criminals who attempt to recoup that wealth from the rich. Radical shifts in economic status lead to violent acts. Valentine stumbles into financial strain and resorts to cooperating in a drug organization to make money. While previously he was only an economic parasite, the switch into drugs leads to wealth at the expense of the people’s health. In a radical move, he is willing to have his girlfriend killed to protect himself (244-245).

Kill Bill offers an entirely new critique. Because the hero is a woman, an examination is better suited along gender lines. Judith Franco, writing about the violent French revenge film Baise-moi, details an environment in which women counter the violence of men with lunatic rationality, a symptom of the general anxiety about the state of the heterosexual couple (1). In many ways, this examination gains more forceful weight when applied to Tarantino’s epic. Beatrix is left for dead on her wedding day. Moreover, a man she truly loves shoots her. This betrayal angers her more than the act itself and sparks a trail of revenge. Franco writes, “The female protagonists take masculinity codified traits such as directness, violence, aggression, independence and control in their stride, thus challenging social prescriptions of femininity in terms of attitudes and behaviour” (3). Her brevity in speech and combat typifies Beatrix. She is utterly remorseless in battle. After killing Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) in front of her daughter, Beatrix coolly informs the daughter that if one day she wants revenge, she has a right to it. With that, she is off to her next killing. What is perhaps more interesting to me, after viewing both films dozens of times, is that Quentin Tarantino does not sexualize Uma Thurman. Of course she is a sexy woman, but in the film she is after one thing: revenge. There is no room for sexuality. In many ways, this tempered display matches Franco’s argument better than her intended subject, Baise-moi, which contains numerous lesbian sex scenes, in conjunction with brutal violence. Tarantino bypasses this altogether and presents a woman who does not conform to the basic tenets of femaleness. Even when it appears that Beatrix has settled down with her daughter, we feel as though she cannot completely leave her life of danger. As Bill said, it is her nature. In this respect, Taratino is able to present a woman that has emotional needs but is not subjugated to the typical “Leave it to Beaver” type of motherhood.

The revenge genre provides a perfect setting for modern directors to experiment with storytelling techniques, especially in non-traditional ways. Still, these directors stick to a basic story, but approach it in different ways. While the films may seem to be superficially violent, this display often serves different functions. Additionally, the revenge genre provides a perfect, popular genre to embed societal criticism and observation.