Some of you mentioned it was more believable as a friendship than a romance and I'd agree with that.
the kiss at the end wasn't originally in the script and was improvised. when i first watched it, i was fully expecting a full-blown affair and was a bit surprised that the kiss at the end was all that came of it. i took it as them restraining themselves since they knew their time was limited and just letting go a little bit at the end.
watching it now, it does seem like we aren't shown as many scenes in a romantic context. it's not a long film and they don't even meet each other until like 30 minutes in. also considering that the amount of time they have together isn't that long, i guess it's more like a emotional "soulmate" situation where their connection and bonding is amplified by the isolation and just didn't have the time to progress to the physical intimacy part.
Seginustemple posted...
I kinda roll my eyes at
was pretty much my reaction for those scenes. i did cringe during the sushi scene though because it was the first time the character just did it on his own. Charlotte at one point asks, "Why do they switch the l's and r's here?" which i think reveals the mindset. it's not that l's and r's are being "switched" but that they don't exist in Japanese. like the letter 'r' has no equivalent character. there's a character which sounds like it, but it is not the same. that's what's lost in translation. she's thinking about it in context of English letters and "well that's how they speak English here" not "these people are speaking in a language that doesn't have the same rules as their native language making it appear a certain way to me because I can't speak theirs and we need to communicate"