Ensayo Visual: Her – Lost in Translation

Once upon a time, filmmakers Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola were married. While fitting the dreams of film hipster heaven, their marriage ended long before the Internet could freak out about their seemingly perfect union, not unlike the way it did during the twee super marriage of Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Zoe Deschanel (it, too, didn’t last). «It’s not Spike,» Coppola insisted in 2003 about Giovanni Ribisi’s portrayal of a character in “Lost In Translation” many felt was a dig at her ex-husband. «But there are elements of him there, elements of experiences. There are elements of me in all the characters.»

Regardless, people have drawn lots of parallels between Coppola’s “Lost In Translation” and Jonze’s 2013 film, “Her,” starring Joaquin Phoenix.

Video essayist Jorge Luengo Ruiz has gone one step further and created “Lost in Translation // Her: An Unloved Story,” a beautiful video piece that almost imagines the films in a visual conversation with one another. “Three persons. Two cities. One feeling” is the clever tag line, and as video essays go, it’s a rather moving piece of work. Simple, but effective and lovely, with a lot of corresponding and symmetrical action cross cutting. Well done. Watch below, swoon, and/or become a little wistful.