It is the 20th anniversary of Lost in Translation. If you look online, you’ll notice that most of the commemoratory coverage has tended to revolve around the changing culture, noting that nobody really wants to spend a couple of hours watching a western film-maker mock Japanese people any more. But Sofia Coppola has managed to stand her ground with a new narrative: how annoyed Spike Jonze was with her depiction of him.
Lost in Translation is a loose retelling of the dissolution of Coppola’s marriage to Jonze. Played by Giovanni Ribisi, the Jonze character is a petulant, self-obsessed man-baby who spends his time flirting with a bubble-headed young woman (Anna Faris) widely assumed to be based on Cameron Diaz. But while the movie drifted off and became about Scarlett Johansson witnessing Bill Murray’s midlife crisis, the depiction of Jonze stuck.
