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'Lost in Translation' has received considerable critical acclaim since its release in the US in 2003. The film has also attracted large audience numbers in that country and here in Australia, as well as 800-plus reviews here on IMDB. So what's it all about? Is it worth the hype?

The movie is set in Tokyo. Bill Murray plays Bill Harris, a middle-aged film star who has forsaken artistically satisfying work to shoot a whisky ad in the city. He's trapped in a dull

marriage, with a career that's going nowhere. Scarlet Johansson plays Charlotte, a beautiful young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a trendy, workaholic photographer and unable to work out what to do with her life post-college.

These two lonely, aimless souls meet in a hotel bar. At first, their relationship consists merely of "hello's" and smiles over scotches and cigarettes. Then Charlotte's husband goes away on an assignment, and they're thrust together for several days...

The leads are brilliant, and their chemistry is beautifully understated. They wonderfully play out a passion that is always there, in conversations, smiles and songs (Murray's drunken rendition of Roxy Music's 'More than This' is hilarious and tragic), but must be repressed due to their life circumstances. They're both married, there's an age difference, and the viewer is

haunted throughout the film by the knowledge that they will have to eventually separate into the huge, crowded city that is Tokyo. There are no hyped-up Hollywood sex scenes here, just two lost souls reaching out for each other, never quite gripping the other until the ending - and even then ...

I was also very interested by the idea of translating love. The love between Bill and Charlotte is lost in translation, as are so many of their exchanges with the Tokyo locals. Admittedly, though, this theme does suggest the Western bias of the film. Much of the movie's humour is devoted to the American's lack of understanding of the local dialect, i.e. Murray driven to confusion by a fast- talking Japanese filmmaker. This is not helped by the fact that the major characters in the film are American. The Japanese actors are relegated to bit parts, usually as characters who serve Murray's character (make-up artists, photographers, and one truly obnoxious TV host).

That said, Lost in Translation was otherwise a wonderfully written, subtle and moving film that has the power to elicit tears and laughter, and will remain in the viewer's mind long after they have left

the cinema.

Dorothy Porter's book "The Monkey's Mask" was a groundbreaker on numerous levels. The text was a novel constructed from poetic verse ("is it a novel or a bloody long poem"? one commentator asked). Furthermore, Porter took a harboiled detective/ noir narrative and relocated it from the streets of NY or LA to seamy inner-city Sydney. Where once we had misogynist male gumshoes(i.e. Sam Spade), Porter gave us Jill Fitzpatrick, a female detective who was also - and proudly - a lesbian.

So how does it translate to film? Very interestingly, indeed.

The story (for those unfamiliar) entails Jill investigating the disappearance and subsequent murder of Mickey Norris, a young Uni student whose amateurish poetry is laced with sex and death. Jill's investigation leads her into Sydney's incestuous poetry scene, and particularly into the bed of Diana Maitland, Jill's duplicituous lecturer. And that's where trouble starts ...

Susie Porter and Kelly McGillis are brilliant as Jill and Diana respectively. There is more emphasis given here to the sexual side of their relationship than there was in Porter's text, and some of the sex scenes do, alas, border on fetishistic.

However, I was fascinated by the way their relationship was mediated by a whole range of other factors. There is class: Diana is an uber-wealthy city dweller who dines at Darling Harbour, while Jill is a working-class woman living in a dingy caravan on Sydney's exclusive North Shore. Also, Diana is entwined in two seedy 'scenes': the poetry world, and the world of English/cultural studies academia. The seamy, incestuous, inhumane side of academia has been explored in films as diverse as Hitchcock's 'Rope' (which TMM bears a resemblance to stylistically- and that also had homosexuality as a theme) to the 1970s horror film 'Bloodsuckers' (an appropriate title for Diana). In The Monkey's Mask, Diana talks down about her students (the women in her class love 'victim poetry', apparently). When Jill tells her of Mickey's gruesome murder, Diana is more excited over her latest academic grant!

In support, Marton Csokas was brilliant as Diana's 'kept man' Nick. He reminded me of Vincent Price's 'kept man'/ playboy in the 1944 noir classic 'Laura'. Unfortunately, the rest of the supporting cast are under-used. As Jill's father, Chris Winwood is given little to do bar totter around with a whisky bottle. Then there is the talented Deborah Mailman, wasted in a thinly-sketched role as Jill's best friend (the most she is given to do is 'come onto' her friend during a time of grief, and that - as another commentator suggested - suggests a dubious link between lesbians and sexual voraciousness. This is a link that is made absolutely concrete in Diana's character, whose evil is - in the film - largely attributed to her sexual appetite).

Also, the movie's conclusion was too neat and polished, given all the ambiguity and uncertainty that preceded it. The ending of Porter's book wasn't nearly as cut-and-dried.

And what was the point of Jill's closing line: "Forget the bitch"? Porter didn't mention that. Was its inclusion to comfort the (conservative, hetero, etc) viewer that the dangerous dyke relationship is over, and we can all sleep nice and easy. Worrying stuff, indeed.

Having said that,though, Lang's 'The Monkey's Mask' is an interesting contributionto the noir genre. Stylish and sensual, with some great chemistry between the leads, it is intelligent entertainment that deserves a look.