I’d been curious about this film from the poster alone, so when I didn’t manage to get along to the cinema at the weekend, tonight seemed a good time to go, and what a marvellous film.
It’s slightly disconcerting to discover that director Sofia Coppolla is a couple of years younger than me – well eighteen months – but her dad no doubt gave her a head start in life. I’m not bitter though, and if she carries on producing this kind of work, the bitterness will disappear the same way it did for all those sportsmen and women who are younger than me.
Above all, I’d say this film is about loneliness. Bill Murray plays a movie star of some past repute, spending time in Japan to advertise whisky. He’s by himself, and he plays the comic angles of this very well in front of the eager to please Japanese attendents who’re catering to his every whim.
Meanwhile Scarlett Johansson’s character is a young wife married to the vague and detached Giovanni Ribisi, a photographer who’s shooting Japanese pop stars.
They’re all holed up in a large anonymous hotel in the middle of Tokyo, and slowly a relationship between the two main characters begins, despite the gulf in age. I won’t detail exactly how this relationship progresses, but let’s just say that dirty old man syndrome is not an issue (Murray is 53 to Johansson’s 19).
I really enjoyed this film. Johansson is something of a sensation at the moment – and I don’t just mean that she’s enormously attractive. She’s soon to appear alongside Colin Firth in Girl With A Pearl Earring, and you can’t avoid her profiles in the papers and magazines at the moment.
Anyhow – go and see this film.