On the couch with Jane: We all want to be found

I somehow stumbled on this film back in the summer of '05. Where I found it I can't be sure. Was it in the branch collection? On the "new arrivals" shelf at Hollywood Video? It doesn't matter now but somehow it went toe to toe with your viewing of Spanglish that long ago summer. You were desparate to get me to watch Spanglish. You watched it once on your own, on one of those famous popcorn/movie Sundays, then you tuned into it again when your sis came by for a visit. Somehow THAT love story caught your eye, one that was sweetly tragic, patently sad, a story of unfulfilled, unrequited love.

I, in turn, really took to that very same theme delivered up, Tokyo style, in Lost in Translastion. Maybe it was the protagonists in our respective films that made that tragic sad message resonate. I loved watching Bill Murray suffer, hated watching him pile back into his taxi, one that would take him to the airport, back to his insufferable wife, to his stullifying life. I studied those two films back to back and maybe, because the time is right, because it's a solid five years since I've seen those two films together on the same playbill, that I need to watch them this weekend. to see if the message is still the same, see if those characters still speak to me after all those years.

We've lived a hard five years since we talked about those movies under that shade tree, the one on the edge of that red dirt j-high track, the one down and around the corner from the path through the berry brambles where we once feasted on sunripened berries. It's been a long time since I've watched Spanglish, and I am sure it's only because I knew once I did I would be flooded with memories of that hot, bothersome and wistfully painful summer. But then, see, that's what those movies were all about, about love sipped, lightly tasted then set down, put away. That love was too heady of a brew, too heavy of a meal, a sweetly poisonous repast that we had to taste and leave behind if only because, from watching the movies, we already knew what the ending would be all about.

Action!

http://thehighhat.com/Nitrate/002/lost_in_translation.html


Roger Ebert's take on Lost in Translation:

http://www.franciste.com/images/art_pieces/lost_in_translation.jpg


LA Times: 50 Tokyo taxi toppers:
http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2010/05/50-tokyo-taxi-tops.html