IT IS AS IF the media elite is daring moviegoers to dislike Sofia Coppola and the Best Picture-nominated film she wrote and directed, "Lost in Translation." Teasing a feature article in which directors of last year's Oscar-likely movies talk with each other, Newsweek--the coolest of the weeklies--had a picture of the young Coppola on its table of contents. The caption read: "Sofia Coppola talks with her peers."

Her "peers" would be, oh, young, inexperienced directors like Clint Eastwood and Peter Jackson.

The New York Times Magazine gave the movie extensive, lavish play before "Lost in Translation" had even been seen anywhere outside of the rarified world of film festivals, treating Coppola as a generational north star along the lines of an Allen Ginsberg. Such attention would be impossible to get if you weren't from a famous clan (hilariously, the Times Magazine article quoted Zoe Cassavetes on the merits of Sofia Coppola; they probably fact-checked her comments with one of the Scorsese children). It's more than enough to make any good anti-royalist sneer.

And yet I like the Oscar-nominated movie, a lot you might say, but with the following caveats. It wasn't the best movie I saw last year; furthermore, it wasn't even the best small, independent movie I saw last year. (That honor belongs to the truly spectacular feat of acting and directing, "Raising Victor Vargas.") Also, on its cloudwalk toward a magical soul-meeting, the movie steadies itself by the handrails of a Salingeresque condescension and a handful of cliches that do not speak well of the director's otherwise light touch.

For those who haven't yet seen the movie, "Lost in Translation" is the brief, nonconjugal love story of two bruised American souls, played by Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, who find each other in the midst of the bewildering visuals and mores of Tokyo. Most of the action takes place in a huge hotel where the two are staying, or rather stuck, until they can finally escape and possibly return home to the shortcomings of their respective lives.

THE ANTI-COPPOLA CASE is easy to sum up. Sympathy for the main character Charlotte is established by showing how her sensitive nature and intelligent mind makes her a little too good for her husband's work as a celebrity photographer. She's also too good for the people her husband has to mingle with, fakers like a Hollywood actress who's in Japan to promote her latest action flick. The movie and its uncharitable humor is instructive of the contempt one feels for fellow Americans who make asses of themselves abroad. Yet this is not solid ground: Many of the failings the movie criticizes are also its heroine's failings.

The stupid American actress is overheard yammering on about how she's, like, so into Bhuddism and, you know, reincarnation. Yet a phoney sacred air fills the screen as Charlotte embarks on her own moments of spiritual tourism. Not that there isn't a difference between the shallowness of the dumb American tourist and the unavoidable shallowness of the intelligent, respectful American who knows she's only looking on. But the latter doesn't truly describe Charlotte. She is prone to Zooey-Glass-like fits of spiritual trembling without anything so redeeming as Zooey's simultaneous self-contempt. Props like the American actress, her husband's work, a lounge singer's bad taste, though entertaining in themselves as objects of derision, also bring attention to Charlotte's own lack of, well, depth and fine taste.