Broken Flowers
(dir. Jim Jarmusch)
After being dumped by his current girlfriend, middle aged romeo Bill Murray takes to the road to look up his old girlfriends - in the hope of finding the writer of an anonymous letter informing him that he has a 20 year old son.
Some odd press had preceeded this film. All the reviews seemed complimentary, but it was generally getting around 3 out of 5. Being a big fan of Bill Murray (and the type of film where 'nothing much happens') this seemed like a high probability hit in the chimp camp. Jim Jarmusch has always had my respect, and for me he's been getting better and better - honing his ideas into a more engaging format.
As a result I was very surprised that in some ways this film seemed like a step away from the style of his more recent films (I'm thinking Ghost Dog) and back towards the slow, detached style of early films like Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law. Even Down By Law had a bit of action, whereas this film really did seem incredibly slight. Bill Murray is pretty much left to his own devices, which is fine on one level as he's always watchable, but beyond the amusing tracksuits his character really didn't seem to have the depth and history that it needed. He seems to pop up in the lives of these women, give us no real insight into what they ever had together and then he gets home with no resolution.
Jessica Lange's pet psychologist provides a few laughs, Chloe Sevigny makes only the briefest of appearances, and only Jeffrey Wright really makes much of an impression. On the whole, pretty disappointing.
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1st Nov 2005 - Tumblr
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