I already had a feel of Sofia Coppola's work before seeing her most well known movie, by having watched the Beguiled and read some articles about her style. Yet, I felt I needed to watch Lost in Translation to have an informed opinion.

To me, every single aspect of this movie came out as very superficial. The plot, the exploration of the Japanese surroundings, the characters and their bond and even the photography, which although beautiful, was not enough to save this movie, or to make it comparable to the slow paced European films whose main quality is the cinematography.

I believe the idea could have been explored much more deeply. The film could have either kept the aesthetics and lost the romance (or whatever that was, the inexistent relation between the characters) OR spent more time developing a connection which would have made the "emotional" scene at the end justified.

Not knowing which direction you are going in or having a midlife crisis are not good enough premises to assume depth in the story.