Ennui is go.

Insomuch as Lost in Translation, the latest midlife-crisis ennui-fest from the Hollywood Oscar-mill, can be said to have meaningful events I am going to reveal them here. And insomuch as the movie can be said to have a resolution, I am going to discuss it here. And insomuch as the movie can have a message, I will reveal it here. In short, this review could be considered a spoiler.

Lucky for you there are no meaningful events, resolutions, or messages.

Lost in Translation follows movie-star Bob Harris (fifty-three year old Bill Murray) and recent college graduate Charlotte (a “barely legal” nineteen-year-old Scarlett Johansson) as they fall in love while sharing a hotel in Tokyo. There are two problems: Bob and Charlotte are both married. And, of course, Bob is more than twice Charlotte’s age.

Now, as far as I’m concerned that’s enough potential conflict for two movies. And either conflict, explored to sufficient depth, would no doubt make compelling and moving stories.

So will someone tell me why writer-director Sofia Coppola spends most of the film’s hundred-and-two minutes on atmospheric cityscape shots and scene after repetitious scene of linguistic confusion?

I have a theory. I think Coppola was aiming for “pseudo-depth,” hoping the Emperor’s New Clothes strategy would carry the film all the way through the Oscars.

Let me explain. No, that would take to long. Let me sum up. Coppola dances around her subject matter, afraid to commit her characters to any particular course of action until the very end. And that action they commit to? The audience has to guess.

Oh, there are plenty of scenes. Ripe with symbolism, I’m sure. Lots of places for people to say “oh, and here Charlotte sees this and she thinks…” or “here Bob does this and he thinks…” The problem is this: the script is so sparse and god-help-us-all subtle we’re never given the opportunity to see how the characters respond to the things they’re seeing. So we can’t say what they think. We can only make up a story in our mind to replace the one Coppola should have been telling.

An example: Charlotte, wandering aimlessly through the hotel, stumbles into a flower-arranging session full of Japanese women in traditional dress silently arranging flowers. Charotte wetly tries to indicate she doesn’t want to participate, but the Japanese woman who takes her arm doesn’t speak English, and she tentatively starts arranging flowers herself. Earlier, we watched Charlotte attempting to decorate her hotel room with fake pink cherry blossoms. There’s a connection here, but what is it? Do these two scenes together suggest she’s afraid she’ll become a silent housewife? Possibly. Or does she yearn for the traditional role she feels is out of reach to one of her generation? That too is quite possible. You could support either contradictory statement from the text just as easily. You can’t tell what she thinks because she never responds. All we get to see is her expression, the sadly-worried-good-soldier-brave-face most teenage girls have when forced to wear that ugly gift-dress to grandma’s house.

Sarcasm? anger? schadenfreude? You choose.

Charlotte never says, to either her husband John or her father-figure/platonic lover Bob, “I saw the most extraordinary thing today,” or “you’ll never believe what these women were doing…” She never says “I couldn’t live like that,” or “Why can’t life be more like that?” We just see the scenes, and the issue is dropped, never to return.

Just like that. we always see the beginnings of things, never the ends, never the reactions. What will John think when he comes back and sees Charlotte has spent the day putting pink flowers up all over the place? Oo. There’s a juicy bit of conflict. Maybe he’ll fly off the handle! “You know I can’t stand pink, Charlotte? Why did you have to put up these stupid flowers?” But no. No reaction, no mention, no return to the flowers at all. We don’t even know if the flowers make her feel better or worse about her situation.

Maybe John’s flighty friend, the dimwit starlet Kelly (Anna Faris), will catch on to the amount of time Charlotte is spending with Bob and report back to John. Maybe Charlotte will turn a corner and see John and Kelly having an intimate dinner. Maybe one of the innumerable irritating faxes or fedEx packages Bob gets from his wife will be the cover of a tabloid, an unflattering picture of Bob and Charlotte on the cover and a note scrawled in Sharpie, “my lawyer will be calling your lawyer?” Maybe Bob and Charlotte will throw all caution to the wind, abandon their hotel and their spouses, and run off to have a good time together seeing the rest of Japan.

But that would be another movie.

Oh no! Not Another Teen Movie!

In this one, all they do is stare at their reflections and moon about … something.

But then — oh happy day! — just has he’s leaving the city, Bob sees Charlotte walking down the street! He orders his driver to stop! He chases her through the streets! They embrace! He holds her close, whispers in her ear. Closeups of Charlotte’s eyes — they’re tearing up, but you can’t tell if her heart is breaking because her face is buried in Bob’s shoulder. Bob whispers a long time, but we can’t hear what he says. Then they part. Charlotte is crying and smiling. Is it a brave face? Is it relief? Is it joy? Bob is smiling broadly. Is he trying to be encouraging? Is he happy? Have they come to a decision?

Credits roll.

Oh. It’s one of those. Just like everything else in the movie, we’re supposed to come to our own conclusion. We see the beginnings but never the ends. We see the thinking but never the conclusion. We see the causes but never the effects.

Coppola is afraid of the commitment. She won’t tell the story. She insists you make it up yourself. The provides the ennui and the soundtrack and the male-fantasy shots of nineteen-year-old Johannson (playing twenty-one-year-old) Charlotte in her panties and a sweater. You, lazy viewer, actually have to provide the story.

It’s a neat trick. Because the story is so quiet, because the filmography is so exquisitely shot, because the ennui is so thick, the movie must be deep! And if you don’t get it — you’re lazy! You expect to have everything handed to you! You expect the writer to do all the thinking for you!

Of course we’re Oscar material. Can’t you tell?

Coppola’s story is not a bittersweet intergenerational star-crossed romance. It’s a travelogue where no-one has any fun. But to prove you are smart, deep, and intellegent, you have to nod and say “oh, yes, Oscar material. Certainly.”

But I tell you this for sure: this film has no clothes. The depth is a mirage. The only depth you can find in this movie is the story you create to go with the images Coppola provides. Which means you deserve the writing credit, not Coppola. Coppola abdicated.

She’s not a genius, she’s a coward.