If we move on to ask what Lost in Translation is about, at the level of the themes with which it engages, explicitly or more implicitly, most apparent are the issues of loneliness, alienation and disconnection to which reference has already been made on numerous occasions in this book, including what is signified by some of the formal qualities examined in the previous chapter. The lack of overt narrative ‘action’, visuals such as the images of Charlotte framed in her hotel window or exploring parts of the city and the cooler tones of the soundtrack are all expressive of this dimension of the film, which is also one of its markers of positioning in relation to the tradition of art cinema. The jet-lagged Tokyo experiences of Bob and Charlotte, out of time and out of place, create a heightened expression of dislocation that seems intended to stand for a broader sense of alienation, a frequent subject of works of art cinema and other forms of cultural production that might be situated within either the modernist or postmodernist traditions (the alienating qualities of the city are strongly associated with certain strains within modernism that date back to the urban growth of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while the particular qualities of Tokyo neon and the hushed no-space of the hotel suggest a more obvious link with later accounts of the postmodern). These issues are also closely linked to some aspects of the way the film can be read as offering a particular kind of representation of Japan and/or the Japanese, an area in which it has faced accusations of ethnic/racist stereotyping that imply a rather different cultural positioning.