Lost In Translation (2003) is one of my favourite films. When I first watched it at 23, it made me laugh and cry. More significantly, it made me sit up and notice Sofia Coppola’s work. I had already watched The Virgin Suicides (1999) previously, but that was such a particularly stylised rendition of teenage desire and feminine mystique that I felt slightly removed from it even though it had lush, beautiful visuals. Lost in Translation, while equally stylish, felt more intimate and real, with Coppola capturing the semi-autobiographical experience of being a sensitive young woman with a perceptiveness that many filmmakers had not achieved previously. In fact, that she favoured an introverted and sensitive protagonist struggling with her selfhood deviated completely from how Hollywood cinema had presented women up to that point–they were damsels, femme fatales, brash broads or sexless caricatures.

What I appreciated in particular was how Coppola portrays the pivotal and often difficult moment as a young woman emerges from her chrysalis. Even though Scarlett Johansson has since established herself as a Hollywood bombshell, parlaying her luscious old-world brand of glamour and sex appeal into enormous box office success, she has never been as memorable as when she played Charlotte, who finds her feet through an unlikely friendship with an ageing action star portrayed with gentle and reliable hilarity by Bill Murray.

This brings us to the opening scene, a memorably long take of Charlotte in pink see-through panties as the prelude to her story. Coppola does a lot of her storytelling through clothes, and famously had to convince a reluctant Johansson to commit to the shot by putting them on herself to show her what it would look like. It’s easy to see why Johansson had reservations. At once girlish yet unabashedly sensual, the image is an unmistakable reflection of the awkward and confusing sensation of being at the cusp of womanhood, where one is tentative and unsure about one’s identity and what to do with it, but is already aware of the complexities that simmer underneath while also being confronted with the palpable physicality of one’s femininity. It also conveys vulnerability obviously, as we look in on Charlotte during a private, unguarded moment.

This is reinforced by the fact that Coppola took inspiration for this shot from a 1973 painting entitled “Jutta” by late American photorealist John Kacere. Kacere was best known for painting women in lingerie and he focused on the posterior and pelvic area, which feels intrusive and objectifying since it basically replicates the male gaze. Nonetheless, Coppola’s appropriation of the image frees it somewhat of its voyeuristic and sexual overtones, conveying instead an image of a young woman inhabiting her space in an un-self-conscious manner. The muted colours of the palette also imbue it with softness and nostalgia–as compared to the harder lines and sexuality in Kacere’s work–most probably an aesthetic decision on Coppola’s part as she looks back on a younger, more uncertain self.

Credits:
Screen still of Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation (2003) from Rebloggy
Video from YouTube