Films watched recently:

Dogville: More Hollywood names taking their mainstream fans to Foreign Film Land, at the risk of causing them to walk out. This time Ms Kidman, Mr Caan and Ms Bacall drag us into the world of writer and director Mr Lars Von Trier, of Danish “Dogme” fame. He’s very keen on Rules and Disciplines in making Art, is terribly angry about unkindness and hypocrisy in American society, and is an unabashed admirer of the allegorical plays of Mr Brecht. Come back, O average popcorn muncher!

The film is shot entirely on an enormous abyss-like black theatre space, representing the small fictional 1930s US mountain town of Dogville. No set and minimum props, but plenty of close and far camera angles, hand-held shots, quick cutting, overhead views, zooms, and so on, all to make this much more than just a filmed stage play. Rooms and walls marked out on the floor in white lines like road markings, with labels in capital letters: “THE OLD WOMAN’S BENCH.” “CHUCK AND VERA’S HOUSE.” And, significantly in one corner, “DOG”. We hear the barks and the doors opening and closing but the actors have to mime everything else. The lack of walls makes Dogville literally a transparent town, and means that while a scene is going on in one house, in the background the other residents are quietly getting on with their lives: sleeping, working, chatting silently. It’s a device which works particularly well during a harrowing rape scene. The film cuts to other houses or shops, but in the background the event is still horribly visual. As if the building in “Rear Window” were made from glass. Terrific acting from Ms Kidman, who I shall insist on remembering from the film “BMX Bandits”.

The wry, classic-novel-like narration is especially marvellous, and beautifully voiced by Mr Hurt. Powerful use of Mr Bowie’s song “Young Americans”, too. Dogville does take some getting used to at first, but all in all it’s a rather superb film.

Lost In Translation. After The Virgin Suicides, this confirms director Ms Coppola as a mainstream cinematic poet, with very much her own style. Dreamy detachment, sensual yet sexless, musings on Life, people moping about, confused and entranced by the world, by others, and by other worlds. And lots of appropriately atmospheric indie music. Last time, mostly by Air. This time, there’s the white noise melodies of The Jesus and Mary Chain, Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine. Indeed, melodies within white noise is very much the message of Lost In Translation. The night on the town sequence, including the Karaoke singing, is so terrific, I felt genuinely taken out of myself. No mean feat for me.

I think Ms Coppola’s favourite words are still very much Virgin and Suicide. Despite her married status and predilection for moping around in her underwear, Ms Johansson’s character is Ms Virgin, hermetically sealed from Life, and unusually for a film with a 15 certificate, there’s no sex scenes. Mr Murray, meanwhile, is Mr Suicide, ravaged with Enough of Life: drink, sex, money, marriage. Ms Johansson seems twelve, Mr Murray twelve thousand.

I hear that young female customers at Archway Video have rented this film, expecting to sympathise with Ms Johansson, only to return it and complain that it’s “boring”. Maybe because it’s a film about BEING a young woman, rather than targeted FOR young women. I think it’s also fairly pertinent that the writer is a woman over 30 rather than, say, the likes of Mr Nabokov. It does brilliantly portray the appeal of the older, apparently wise and experienced man to an angsty young girl, and yet manages to restrain from sleazy consequences in favour of a platonic, mutually life-saving exchange of opposite perspectives, in line with the film’s own theme of blissful but ambivalent detachment.

Despite the setting, the film is by no means about Japan. It more equates mixed feelings of being in a strange location, with mixed feelings about relationships, Love, Life and what to do when one is found in possession of it. It also reminded of me of my own trip to Japan a few years ago as guitarist with the band Spearmint. Like the film this also included a joyous time in a karaoke hotel. At one point, I even listened to My Bloody Valentine on my walkman as I gazed out of a bullet train window.

When Ms Johansson asks Mr Murray, “does it get any easier?”, she means coping with Life, another country where her character can’t yet speak the language. This reminded me of a time when during a Tokyo TV interview, Spearmint drummer Ronan was given some strange Japanese sweetmeat to savour, and after chewing for a long, long while, said “does it get any better?”

There was much laughter, but I read an enormous amount into this statement, half-joking, half not joking. It’s the feeling of being in two minds, which in his talk on Mr MacNeice’s poetry Mr Bennett describes as “the feeling most of us feels most of the time”. Half enjoying Difference when one experiences it, such as a strange exciting menu in a strange exciting land, half wanting to go home and eat a Mars Bar. Half wanting to take the plunge and do something adventurous with one’s life (the possibility of an affair with someone several decades away in age), half wanting to stay put and stick to the apparent comfort of the familiar.

The only letdown for me is the Oscar-winning script. It’s true that the Japanese characters are short-changed by the film, but then this is Mr Murray and Ms Johansson’s world, not theirs. Indeed, Ms Johansson’s American husband (Mr Ribisi) and his blond film star friend (Ms Faris) are also cruelly thinly-sketched as characters. The problem is when using these minor characters’ shortcomings to set the main ones into sharp relief. Entirely unnecessary, as Mr Murray and Ms Johansson are perfectly fully-formed and “well-rounded” enough already, both in the writing and in the acting.

One example springs to mind. The intended joke about Ms Faris booking her hotel room as “Evelyn Waugh” without realising the novelist’s gender. I’m reminded of a scene in the comedy “Clueless”, where the main girl, Cher, is asked by a boy she’s trying to impress what music she’s into. “Do I like Billie Holiday? I LOVE him!”

This works for Clueless, as it’s all part of Cher’s lovable, clothes-obsessed character. But in Lost In Translation, the Evelyn Waugh joke clashes with the film’s tone. It’s intended for Mr Murray and Ms Johansson to bond over feeling smarter than Ms Faris, but only made me think of them as cruel and sneering. For all we know, Ms Faris might be perfectly aware of Mr Waugh’s gender, and is just being a bit arch in private. We don’t get a chance to find out either way, and this is unfair in a film with so much empathy elsewhere.

My other slight reservation was Mr Murray’s character’s name: Bob Harris. UK readers of a certain age will be aware of “Whispering” Bob Harris, the toothy BBC DJ, music TV presenter and inspiration for The Fast Show’s “Jazz Show” presenter. I kept expecting Mr Murray to turn to the camera every time he was with Ms Johansson, and say “Great…!”

Still, it’s a US film, and one can’t check for famous namesakes in other countries when naming one’s characters. My own favourite example is in Woody Allen’s 1992 film “Husbands and Wives”, in which Mr Allen remembers a sexy young ex-lover of his having wild erotic tastes. The character is called Harriet Harman.

On balance, though, I found Lost In Translation to be a stunning, wonderful film. If Ms Coppola is reading this: you, madam, are an amazing director. But please let me be your co-writer on the next script.