Wings of Desire

When I was thinking about the film, I remember thinking a little bit about Wings of Desire, and how they could be transparent for some people and not for others. That was an interesting concept.

Sofia Coppola has said she wanted Lost in Translation to feel like a Wong Kar-wai film set in Tokyo, the same grammar of longing, the same two people in a city who almost connect and then don't. In the Mood for Love is the direct model: desire as proximity, missed by centimeters. Ozu's Tokyo Story is the other ancestor, the city as a place where people pass each other in corridors without ever really meeting.