The Japanese brief encounter between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation is a far more beguiling and culturally honest tease than The Last Samurai .

Neither star could really care a fig about the country unless they’re stumped by a menu. Murray hasn’t been this funny, or flaky, since Groundhog Day. He plays a Hollywood has-been whose career has faded into adverts for cheap Japanese whisky. Johansson is an anguished young wife with everything and nothing before her. Both are trapped in a Tokyo hotel; stranded by age, partners they hate and mutual insomnia. They shuffle glasses in the bar, watch La Dolce Vita at 3am, and bop around in karaoke bars. Then they sizzle politely in the hotel lifts. It’s frustrating. His crumpled face and her luscious loneliness are a match made in modern limbo. But they footle around like a couple from an E. M. Forster novel in search of a plug.

The performances are terrifically lopsided. Murray is a miserable millionaire on the end of the pier. The teenage Johansson is a gifted muse: as potent and languid a vision as the one that beguiled Visconti in Death in Venice. But completely unselfconscious. Her voice is a low, measured drawl.

Her skin is as pale as a Nordic peach. You can choke on the melancholia, even if you never quite work out what exactly is lost in translation.

SOLD IN JAPAN

Bill Murray’s film star in Lost in Translation is not the only one to make a quick yen thanks to Japanese advertising:

Sean Connery Suntory Japanese whisky

Leonardo DiCaprio Orico credit card company

Harrison Ford Kirin beer

Anthony Hopkins Hyundai/Honda Cleo

Ewan McGregor Roots Coffee, Edwin 503 Jeans

Brad Pitt Rolex, Roots Beer, Honda

Meg Ryan Purpeau face cream

Arnold Schwarzenegger Cup Ramen (Japan’s answer to Pot Noodle)

Sylvester Stallone Nippon ham

Andy Warhol TDK tapes

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