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.
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.
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