Coppola's comic genius

In Sofia Coppola's second film, her acute eye is focused on two Americans adrift in the alien culture of Tokyo. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a jaded US movie star filming a commercial for a Japanese whisky. His cynicism with the business is exacerbated by jet lag and insomnia.

Between random telephone conversations with his wife, who appears bewilderingly to devote her time to redecorating his study, Harris is pressured by his agent to appear on a Japanese television chat show of appalling crassness.

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), is a newlymarried graduate who accompanies her feckless photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi) to Tokyo. Unable to sleep, she encounters Harris in the hotel bar, where they try to drink themselves into a coma.

They discover shared symptoms of semidetachment and alienation. On a series of Platonic dates his acid wit reawakens her curiosity, while her intelligence shakes him from his stupor. Together they delight in their inability to embrace Japanese rituals and language.

Coppola's movie (shown here in the competition strand, Controcorrente) is a model of dexterity and emotional poise. Shot in the natural (that is, neon) light of Tokyo, with real citizens on the streets, clubs and arcades, it delivers a scintillating study of a metropolis.

As Harris, the bewitched, bothered and bewildered movie star trousering $2 million for a whisky commercial, Murray distils many of his best characters from Groundhog Day to Rushmore. Savage, funny and effortlessly sexy, he is utterly convincing. Johansson is no less luminous, encapsulating with unforced economy the disappointment of the recently wedded and abandoned young wife who diverts her thwarted hopes towards an older man.

Unpredictable, enlightening and so funny it makes your stomach hurt (Murray's pose as Roger Moore in a photo session is achingly good), Coppola's movie is a culture-clash comedy welded to a delicate, erotically-nuanced romance that surprises as it delights. Quite, quite brilliant.