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Her astonishing second film, "Lost in Translation," is a wistfully romantic duet for two lost souls at sea in the neon pandemonium of Tokyo. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a major American movie star in town to pick up a cool $2 million for sitting in a leather chair, wearing a tuxedo, holding a glass of Suntory whiskey and uttering the immortal line, "For relaxing times, it's Suntory time."

These are not relaxing times for Bob. His career is still viable -- he gets recognized a lot and the fans' enthusiasm is genuine. Yet there's a sense that his work and his interest in it peaked several years ago. He has a family, but his 25-year-old marriage no longer holds his interest either. His wife, represented by an exasperated voice on the phone, is more concerned with redecorating her husband's study than she is in her husband. She FedEx's carpet samples to him with the affectionate note, "I like the burgundy. What do you think?"

Plus, Bob can't sleep.

So he spends time in the chicly dark rooftop bar in his sleekly impersonal hotel. That's where he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson). She can't sleep either.

Charlotte is in Tokyo with her husband of two years, John (Giovanni Ribisi), a celebrity photographer who's getting a little too comfortable (for her) with the aimless chitchat and air-kiss energy of his subjects. She's no longer sure whom she married. Neither is Bob. He's at one end of that bewilderment and she's at the other, both sleepless yet sleepwalking through life.

They wake each other up.

What follows is a non-affair to remember, which maintains a delicate balance between friends, lovers and something ineffably greater than either. They are made for each other in a million ways, with sex being one of the lesser ones (though that tension is ever-present).

Their relationship -- sometimes tender, sometimes hilarious -- is the heart and soul of the movie. Still, many of the film's funniest scenes show them interacting with others. Murray's attempts to follow the directions barked at him in Japanese by a Suntory photographer is a comic masterpiece. He mimics various Rat Pack members, mining the subtle differences between Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and even Joey Bishop (whom his hosts have never heard of).

Meanwhile, Charlotte endures the weirdness of John's übershallow conversations with an essence-of-L.A. starlet (Anna Faris) who's overseas on a promotional tour for her new movie.

These close encounters with kiss-ups and idiots, plus the raucous cacophony of the city, are a jarring contrast to the whispered yet trenchant connection between Bob and Charlotte. The movie seems paced to Murray's famous deadpan, stronger on atmosphere and character than it is on story. Rather than moving in a straightforward manner, it's full of odd side trips: Bob at a strip club, saying thank you to a contortionist's inner thighs as he leaves (she's standing on her head); Charlotte soaking up the arcane and adrenalized artistry of a Tokyo games arcade.

This is Johansson's breakthrough role. She's been sensational in movies like "Ghost World" and "The Man Who Wasn't There," but here we discover her distinctiveness -- her still-evolving creamy beauty and her clear-eyed simplicity. There's a freshness in her uncluttered approach to acting.

Still, the movie belongs to Murray. Coppola wrote the role for him and spent five months talking him into doing it. The patented smart-aleck persona that made him a box-office megastar in movies like "Ghostbusters" and "Caddyshack" has acquired the patina of middle age. The supreme ironist now recognizes the innate irony of youthful cynicism. He can still do more with a raised eyebrow than anyone since Groucho Marx, but he's mellower and sometimes slightly poignant. He's gentle with Charlotte, even courtly. In a sense, he's an emblem of a generation of middle-aged anti-establishment hipsters, grown older and somehow, almost in spite of itself, wiser.

This is a great performance, worthy not only of an Oscar nomination but, at this point in the year, of the prize itself.