Originally posted by NYT.com
Initially, with ''Lost in Translation,'' Sofia wrote a kind of short story instead of a script, and the film retains that loose, lyrical feel. The plot is minimal: an American movie star named Bob Harris arrives in Tokyo to film a commercial for a Japanese whiskey. His sense of midlife dislocation is matched by the 20-something driftiness of Charlotte, an equally jet-lagged and sleep-deprived woman who winds up seated next to him late one evening in the hotel bar. When her husband, a self-involved fashion photographer, gets an opportunity to go off for a few days to shoot a rock band, he takes it, leaving his young wife to fend for herself. Bob and Charlotte strike up an unlikely alliance.
The relationship of the fashion photographer and his young wife may or may not have shadings of Coppola's own life and her relationship to Jonze. Giovanni Ribisi, who plays the photographer, speaks with Jonze's mannerisms, and Scarlett Johansson, as Charlotte, is dressed and styled to seem a lot like Coppola. ''I know,'' Coppola says, ''how narcissistic.''
In the last few months, Jonze and Coppola have been distant, rarely living in the same city. ''It's been rough being apart so much,'' she explained. ''But we have to figure out our relationship after Sept. 12, when the movie comes out.''