Starring: Bill Murray (I), Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris

Director Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, with a career-best performance by Bill Murray, and a star-making turn by Scarlett Johansson, will be (or should be) at the top of anyone's list of great films of 2003.

Coppola continues to not so much impress (she made the enigmatic, mournful The Virgin Suicides), but to assure that she has a quiet focus and command of the medium that is entirely hers. It's a combination of music, pacing, and approach. There's a fresh, yet entirely familiar feel to her films, you know that you're in the arms of someone caring and perceptive who is showing you an entirely new vista. If her choices are made by chance, and many of them do seem to be, it's from a great gut instinct. Sofia Coppola has a platinum gut.

In Lost, Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a Hollywood star in his decline, who is in Japan to get paid a lot of money to make a Santori whiskey ad. Charlotte, played by Johansson, happens to be staying in the same hotel as Harris. She's with her rock-star photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), who doesn't have time for her and scoots out for a shoot somewhere, leaving her to fend for herself when she's at her most defenseless. Bob and Charlotte begin to find themselves in the same places and, almost out of a necessity to communicate with someone (neither of them speak the language), they strike up a conversation.

Translation shows the bittersweet, tender relationship between these two dislocated souls with both humor and maturity, a tender mix of emotions where the characters themselves are discovering how they feel while we watch them. It's not as somber as Suicides (which, by definition almost required itself to be somber) and Murray provides subtle moments of comedy (because Coppola knows how to use his sandpaper-humor).

Is it self-indulgent? Yes, but by a director who has the latitude, the ingenuity, and the resources to create her own style. Is it more a scrapbook of characters, incidents, images and sounds? Yes, in a very compelling and intriguing way. But the performances by Murray and Johannson anchor Coppola's disparate pieces, creating a grad-school Brief Encounter. That's not to be snide; this film will hold up.

One last thing: Coppola also learned from some of the best meandering films of the `60s, such Easy Rider and L' Avventura. She leaves some questions hanging, but unlike Fonda's political/sociological "We blew it" or the metaphorical unknown location of a missing woman, the mystery in Translation can't satisfactorily be solved, as it's between two people, where it should stay. If she supplied the answer, you'd still be questioning. That's a thing of achievement.