Thirteen years ago, Sofia Coppola was widely ridiculed for her awkward performance as Mary Corleone in the mafia saga The Godfather III, directed by her father Francis Ford Coppola. Casting her in the film was one of the worst cases of nepotism, the ridiculers said.

Whoever would have thought at the time that she would follow her famed father into production and direction and become a filmmaker at 32 with an assured touch for delicately conceived films about the human condition?

Her second film, Lost In Transition, was a hot item at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice International Film Festival. The promise she showed in her first assignment as director in the adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides has matured abundantly in three years.

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A small-budget film suffused with exquisite irony, gentle humour and a sharp meditation on life's foibles, Lost In Translation may not make a lot of money. But given the wide critical acclaim, including a recent cover in The New York Times Magazine, the film about mysteries and enigma about a handful of emotionally starving people could become a sleeper art-house hit.

It is also the kind of film that should be remembered at the Golden Globe and Oscar awards. The film is showing in a handful of theatres in New York and Los Angeles and will be adding on more cities and screens in the coming weeks.

For Bill Murray, who sought vainly to do a bit of serious work in Razor's Edge 20 years ago and who succeeded considerably with Rushmore five years ago, the Sofia Coppola film may be the movie that will get an Oscar nomination, if not the award itself.

The film centres on an ageing actor Bob Harris (Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), the young wife of a rock band photographer (Giovanni Ribisi). Bob and Charlotte find themselves intrigued by each other in their isolated condition in a Tokyo high-rise hotel. Away from his family, Bob, a star who has seen better days, has plenty of time (and loneliness) on his hands between filming commercials for Japanese whiskey. And Charlotte is utterly lonely, neglected by her husband who does not seem to understand what a treasure she is.

The film is about these lonely souls slowly connecting. It unfolds without being predictable, urgent and cute. Don't expect the scenario of an older man and a younger woman falling for each other in a Woody Allen film.

Coppola told reporters in Toronto at the TIFF that she wrote the film with Murray firmly in her mind, and she had to chase him for nearly three months before he read the script. Then, it was he who was chasing her, wanting to know when she would start shooting the film.

Her persistence and his enthusiasm have yielded a well-etched performance in which melancholy, gentle humour and warmth are never far from one another.

Johansson, who was also in the lead in yet another TIFF favourite, Girl With A Pearl Earring, offers a luminous and revelatory performance as the neglected wife. One of the great sequences in the film shows Bob and Charlotte singing karaoke with Japanese kids at a party. After they go through such numbers as '(What's so funny 'bout) Peace, love and understanding', Bob segues into the older hit 'More than this'. There is a gentle and refined comedy here, with a lot of pathos and irony as one gets yet another look into the lonely man's soul.

While Murray and Johnson are the soul of the film, Coppola has extracted fine performances from a slew of actors, even those who appear only in a few scenes. Anna Faris (Scary Movie) is delightful as the bubble-headed movie star, for example.

Coppola not only tells the story of dislocated souls with sharp and funny observations, but also makes their plight more interesting by placing them in an ever-busy and chaotic Tokyo where they also have to deal with cultural differences and confusions.

You may fault for her for making the film a bit too atmospheric while not making the story too detailed. But even with a 'shortcoming' like this, Lost In Translation is a film that heralds the arrival of a major talent.

CREDITS
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Anna Faris and Giovanni Ribisi
Story-direction: Sofia Coppola
Running time: 105 minutes
Rating: R for sexual content, language
Distributor: Focus Features