melodrama 002
lost in translation
Welcome back to Melodrama, a loosely defined film club.
Today I’m reviewing Lost in Translation. On rewatch, I was reminded how much I love this movie. It’s calm, funny, observant, and just a little bit sad. Champagne-colored melancholy and neon jet lag.
Here is my review and rating card. If you’re so inclined, you can download and fill out your own and share it in the Style Toast chat, on Substack, Twitter, or Instagram. I hope you enjoy. Break a leg.
Spoilers ahead. Read after watching.
THEME
Lost in Translation is a story of intimacy born from shared displacement.
Bob and Charlotte exist in limbo. Bob is successful but fading, performing a version of himself on autopilot. Charlotte is young, newly married, and already unsure of the life she’s stepped into. Both are lonely in Tokyo.
AESTHETIC
The film is a mood piece in the truest sense. Neon lights blur into abstraction. Hotel rooms feel padded and airless. Elevators, bars, and taxis as liminal spaces. Visual loneliness everywhere. Coppola frames Tokyo as an emotional landscape: beautiful, alien, exhausting.
There’s a deliberate softness to the cinematography. Long takes. Lingering silences. Scenes end before you expect them to. The pacing mirrors the jet-lagged haze the characters are living in, days bleeding together, nights stretching on too long. Boredom as texture.
WARDROBE
Charlotte’s wardrobe feels lived-in and honest.
She wears a lot of classic pieces throughout. Button-downs, sweater vests, casual, comfortable layers. It’s modest and slightly professional, but worn a little undone. Smart, but directionless, much like Charlotte herself.
Bob’s clothing, by contrast, is uniform-like. Dark suits. Hotel robes. Everything is as expected.
We see a shift during the karaoke scene, where Charlotte wears a pink wig and Bob swaps his dress shirt for a ringer tee. Both are antithetical to their typical outfits and personalities, which makes the moment feel vulnerable and intimate. They let loose, breaking their isolation and realizing their connection.
SOUNDTRACK
Dreamy, distorted, distant. Floating through Tokyo guided by shoegaze and dream pop. Thank you, Kevin Shields. You can listen here.
There are many types of love in this life. Maybe you’ll find it at the Park Hyatt Tokyo.
Until next time.
Stay toasted, xx
We wandered Tokyo and explored Paris. Now we’re seaside with Persona. Review coming soon.
More Media:
What’s New:
If you want to send someone a Valentine, I made a few for you to screenshot and share with the ones you love.
Book Club:
Our first Book Club meeting will be Sunday, February 15 to discuss January’s reads:
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde
Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz
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I got a bit teary just looking at those photos. This is an absolutely formative movie for me. I saw it in the theater when it came out; I was 27 and had been obsessed with The Virgin Suicides. The aesthetic, the music, the "vibe" for lack of a better word...The end where he whispers in her ear still gets me every time.
The pink wig!!