Like his role models Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson, accomplished indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch provides his typically slow-moving, elliptical ride of a movie by placing Bill Murray squarely in the driver's seat of this sometimes hilarious, more often bittersweet road film. The episodic structure and constant sense of dislocation draw the viewer into an idiosyncratic world filled with knowing glances and almost subliminal comments. Your enjoyment of the film will depend on how much things need to be spelled out for you, as Jarmusch the screenwriter prefers to drive a story by insinuation.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around lifelong bachelor Don Johnston, the subject of too many "Miami Vice" jokes, who opens a letter, typewritten on pink stationery, informing him that he has a 19-year-old son who may soon show up on his doorstep. The letter is unsigned, which tweaks the interest of Don's best friend and next-door neighbor Winston, an enthusiastic and persistent amateur sleuth. It is Winston who tracks down Don's ex-girlfriends across the country and organizes a trip for Don to meet and subtly ask each one a series of questions that may lead him to conclude who is the mother who penned the letter.
The subsequent film really provides mini-showcases for four fine veteran actresses (Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton), who pierce through the hearts of their characters with minimum fuss. Don pretty much remains a cipher throughout these encounters, as he gleans just enough information to tell him what he needs to know. He first meets up with Laura, a recent widow with an exhibitionist adolescent daughter named appropriately Lolita. Looking as beautiful as ever, Stone underplays her white trash role with surprising subtlety, even as she vividly describes her race car husband's fiery death and chats about her calling as a closet organizer.
Next on Don's list is Dora, an uptight real estate agent married to a fellow glad-hand agent, who seems to be bubbling just below the surface about Don's sudden appearance. Conroy, ideally cast in a controlling variation of her Ruth Fisher character on "Six Feet Under", gives a nuanced performance of a woman cracking slowly within the walls of a perfect, pre-fab home. The next stop is at the office of renowned "animal communicator" Carmen, an edgy professional who has apparently abandoned men for animals and a misogynistic receptionist (played with an ideal sense of passive malice by Chloë Sevigny). Lange plays Carmen in sharp, unapologetic detail, conveying the bitterness she holds toward the type of man Don represents to her.
The last encounter is with an even more embittered biker chick named Penny, played with seething force by an almost completely unrecognizable Swinton, who is in turn, defended by a couple of hyper-sensitive, mullet-head bikers. What happens from all these episodes toward its intriguing conclusion will not satisfy those looking for closure, but Jarmusch provides enough emotional baggage for Don to recognize what his journey means to him and to us.
Murray is his typical deadpan self here, but he still maintains that peculiar sense of goodwill he has without which the character would have been simply insufferable. With a Jamaican accent, Jeffrey Wright is wryly comical as Winston even as his curiosity gets the best of him. Also worth mentioning are Pell James' sweet turn as a sympathetic flower shop clerk and Mulatu Astatke's jazzy musical score. Well worth watching for those who like to come to their own interpretations when observing the lives presented by Jarmusch and their personal histories of which we can only speculate.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around lifelong bachelor Don Johnston, the subject of too many "Miami Vice" jokes, who opens a letter, typewritten on pink stationery, informing him that he has a 19-year-old son who may soon show up on his doorstep. The letter is unsigned, which tweaks the interest of Don's best friend and next-door neighbor Winston, an enthusiastic and persistent amateur sleuth. It is Winston who tracks down Don's ex-girlfriends across the country and organizes a trip for Don to meet and subtly ask each one a series of questions that may lead him to conclude who is the mother who penned the letter.
The subsequent film really provides mini-showcases for four fine veteran actresses (Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton), who pierce through the hearts of their characters with minimum fuss. Don pretty much remains a cipher throughout these encounters, as he gleans just enough information to tell him what he needs to know. He first meets up with Laura, a recent widow with an exhibitionist adolescent daughter named appropriately Lolita. Looking as beautiful as ever, Stone underplays her white trash role with surprising subtlety, even as she vividly describes her race car husband's fiery death and chats about her calling as a closet organizer.
Next on Don's list is Dora, an uptight real estate agent married to a fellow glad-hand agent, who seems to be bubbling just below the surface about Don's sudden appearance. Conroy, ideally cast in a controlling variation of her Ruth Fisher character on "Six Feet Under", gives a nuanced performance of a woman cracking slowly within the walls of a perfect, pre-fab home. The next stop is at the office of renowned "animal communicator" Carmen, an edgy professional who has apparently abandoned men for animals and a misogynistic receptionist (played with an ideal sense of passive malice by Chloë Sevigny). Lange plays Carmen in sharp, unapologetic detail, conveying the bitterness she holds toward the type of man Don represents to her.
The last encounter is with an even more embittered biker chick named Penny, played with seething force by an almost completely unrecognizable Swinton, who is in turn, defended by a couple of hyper-sensitive, mullet-head bikers. What happens from all these episodes toward its intriguing conclusion will not satisfy those looking for closure, but Jarmusch provides enough emotional baggage for Don to recognize what his journey means to him and to us.
Murray is his typical deadpan self here, but he still maintains that peculiar sense of goodwill he has without which the character would have been simply insufferable. With a Jamaican accent, Jeffrey Wright is wryly comical as Winston even as his curiosity gets the best of him. Also worth mentioning are Pell James' sweet turn as a sympathetic flower shop clerk and Mulatu Astatke's jazzy musical score. Well worth watching for those who like to come to their own interpretations when observing the lives presented by Jarmusch and their personal histories of which we can only speculate.