Lost in translation: reality as fake, image as reality

Abstract

[Excerpt] Throughout the flm, Charlotte is set adrift on the streets of Tokyo, the camera accompanying her in a way as to also determine the resulting images as subjective impressions of a foreign perception of the reality at hand. A reality turned into signs that, for the most part, become untranslatable, a circumstance that brings out the fact that the character is not lost because she cannot identify herself with Japanese culture, but rather because the contemporary construction of one’s identity becomes more and more enthralled by the simultaneously convoluted and fragmented condition of time and space. And although the character is framed within situations, spaces or rituals that call for her attention — moments that might imply a natural efort of understanding — at some point she acknowledges that she doesn’t feel anything. Charlotte’s naiveté towards what unfolds around her thus establishes a discomfort that paradoxically seduces those following her movements, as if one, as Charlotte, is looking at things, at the city, for the frst time… no memories, no knowledge, just the fuzzy indiference of an image waiting to be revealed. [...]