Oct. 04, 2003 - 9:26 pm
Colin told me about this coming out about a month ago. i think i will always be enfatuated with anything related to Sofia Coppola. ever since i saw The Godfather Part III a few months ago, i think about her periodically. she was so amazing in that movie. and then i realized that she also directed The Virgin Suicides (1999). she's definitely someone that i'll be watching for in the future.
this movie stars Bill Murray as an American celebrity visiting Tokyo to take part in an Advertising campaign. his trip is paralleled with that of Scarlett Johanssen, a young american girl who feels unfulfilled by her two years of marriage and lack of friends that really understand her. they are both staying in the same large Tokyo hotel and end up periodically running into each other in the hotel lobby bar. they slowly begin to talk to each other and then they go out to spend a night with her friends. soon they are spending a lot of their time together, and if they aren't together they're thinking about each other. the age difference between them and the fact that they are both married keeps their feelings somewhat at bay...
SPOILERS!!! i really like the sort of open ending of this film. he whispers into her ear something reassuring, but it's basically inaudible. it leaves you to think whatever you want about what will happen to their relationship. i'm sure like many other people i'm believing that he said something like "You mean everything to me and we'll be together someday." well, now that i think about it i don't know if that's the best thing or not. maybe he says "Even though we can't be together, I'll always love the times we were together." but i do love the fact that you can believe what you want to about that. of course, maybe it was audible after all and it was just the fact that i was coughing that i couldn't hear what he said. (terribly sick the past couple of days.)
one of the most innovative things about this movie, i think though, is that it's what i would call the first "travel film." i can't think of another movie that made me feel like i was actually taking home movies in another country. lots of hand-held camera movement and lots of looking out windows, staring at lights, looking at nature and people of a different culture objectively. not only do we get enthralled in a hidden romance between two extraordinary people, but we get to observe what it's like to be somewhere other than where we are. it's a great film and it's doing something that hasn't been done before.
oh, and by the way, the new diary template is still in flux. i have a few things i'm working on changing, so the looks should be improved/corrected over the next few days. hopefully i'll make a bit more progress tonight before most of you even read this.