'LOST IN TRANSLATION' SPEAKS POIGNANT VOLUMES.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

SOFIA COPPOLA'S ``Lost in Translation'' is as fine a look at dislocation as you're ever going to see, and it has the nice bonus of boasting Bill Murray's greatest performance. With this dreamlike movie about two people who make a magical, intense connection in a city that induces displacement, Coppola has created a lyrical look at the way an unexpected friendship can restore one's soul - even if the end result is both temporary and bittersweet. It's a small, brilliant gem.

Murray plays Bob Harris, a jet-lagged American movie star who has come to Tokyo to shoot a commercial for a Japanese whiskey company or, as Bob puts it with a sad, small measure of self-loathing and self-awareness, ``getting paid $2 million when I should be doing a play or something.'' Bob has reached a midlife crisis of epic proportions: His career is stagnant, his marriage of 25 years has soured and, while he loves his children to death, talking to them on the phone is the only time he can manage to spark to something approaching genuine enthusiasm.

Bob is staying at the sleekly modern Park Hyatt Hotel, complete with slavishly (and ceremonially) attentive staff (the movie has great fun with Japanese culture, even if it seems Coppola is sometimes shooting fish in a barrel) and a spectacular high-rise bar that acts as a way station for the lost and lonely. It's there that Bob makes eye contact with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson, fiercely funny and intelligent), who, like Bob, is at loose ends in her life. Married to a workaholic celebrity photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) in Tokyo on assignment, Charlotte is having grave doubts about her husband, her career potential (she wants to be a writer) and, well, the meaning of it all.

So marks the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Bob and Charlotte make the occasional forays into the Tokyo nightlife (there's a great scene at a karaoke bar with Murray singing a blistering cover of Elvis Costello's ``What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding''), but mostly they stay in, discuss mutual insomnia and share some of the most perfectly observed conversations you'll ever have the privilege to hear in a movie. It's a romance where consummation is almost beside the point; the emotional climaxes - joyful and heartsick - are incredibly powerful.

Murray mines the same melancholy vein he put to such good use in ``Rushmore,'' only here, because of the expanded role, his weary fatalism has even more depth and poignancy. Once Charlotte enters the picture, Murray slowly reveals his character's naked vulnerability and neediness, moving toward a final scene that is devastating in the way Murray conveys all the things Bob so desperately wants - dreams that must, at least for now, remain unfulfilled. Unforgettable.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - Four stars

(R: some sexual content)

Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson.

Director: Sofia Coppola.

Running time: 1 hr. 42 min.

Playing: ArcLight in Hollywood; AMC Century 14 in Century City; Pacific's Grove Stadium 14 in Beverly Hills; Loews Cineplex Broadway in Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson form a beautiful friendship in Sofia Coppola's melancholy masterpiece.