It's almost as if Ivan, the Lothario from Almodovar's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN had stepped into a parallel world where of all of the women who he had been involved with (and in some way, left them with a broken heart), one of them (Pepa, the one who got pregnant in Almodovar's film) had decided to tell him she was the mother of his 19-year old son via a letter that arrives in the mail one day out of the clear blue.
That Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is seen sitting on his sofa watching "Don Juan" on TV in complete apathy as his current girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) is packing her items and leaving is a clue of who this man is. That he couldn't be more passive indicates something is inherently wrong with this man. No wonder he spends most of the time alone in this movie, unable to connect.
But the arrival of the letter -- written on a typewriter in pink stationery and enclosed in an equally pink envelope acts as a catalyst to push this man out of his shell and into the world of the living. A friend and neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), tracks down five females with whom he could have been involved with at the time, this fathering this unknown son. Off Don goes to see which of them is the mother, less out of an actual interest as much as a way of knowing what has become to these women.
They couldn't be more disparate in nature: Laura (Sharon Stone), the first, is carefree and bears the mark of a fading beauty, a woman who was once stunning and still is, in a bleached way. Her daughter, appropriately named Lolita (Alexis Dziena), shamelessly flirts with Don while talking on her cell phone and again the question arises: what does this ineffectual man have that seems to attract women? The second is Dora (Frances Conroy). Married into success, she is the shadow of a woman who was once something of a hippie, but has since become a successful real-estate agent living in complacency -- the perfect North-American housewife. Except that she has no children, and seems to harbor some feelings for Don as conveyed in her sad eyes, and wistful body language.
Carmen comes next. Played by Jessica Lange, she is a woman who might have been involved with Don at one point, but now seems to have traded his gender for the female (Chloe Sevigny, acting as her assistant in the business Lange runs). There is little in common with Carmen and Don, but he has less in common with Penny (Tilda Swinton), a woman who lives in trailer-park hell and whom he has swift but ferocious altercation with... or the other way around. She was the one who abandoned Don, and would rather never see him again, and the mention of a son blows things out of proportion as two men beat him unconscious, not before he gets a glimpse of a pink typewriter cast dejected on the ground some feet away. Could she be the one? The fifth, Michelle, is dead. Murray has a silent scene, sitting forlorn in front of this woman's tomb, looking as if he is about to cry. He never does, which makes this quiet scene even more emotional.
Bill Murray has here what could be the role that has him out-do the sad man he played in LOST IN TRANSLATION. His impassivity is something not many actors could do, with those semi-dead eyes and that limpness that suggests a man slowly melting into silent desperation -- a man who cannot relate with people even as he tries. Even his conversations with his neighbor seem drained of real life... he seems to be on autopilot, at first going through the motions, later developing a real interest in solving this mystery and patching things up, if such a thing is indeed possible.
The women, however, all have brief roles, and all create plausible roles that leave an impression long after they've been gone from the screen altogether, which brings a feeling of something vital that Don has lost -- maybe irrevocably so. With the exception of Tilda Swinton's majestic fury, all of them have a sadness just brimming below the surface, expressed differently, in their own acting styles.
Jim Jarmusch has made a film that is as European as can be -- a film that offers no clear solutions of what this letter may mean, or if Don has reached some form of understanding of himself. For an American director to be able to make this kind of movie that would only appeal to a select public and be successful is an event in its own. His movie, like Antonioni's BLOW UP, is less about a mystery than about the emptiness within a man who has left a lot of unsolved issues behind.
That Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is seen sitting on his sofa watching "Don Juan" on TV in complete apathy as his current girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) is packing her items and leaving is a clue of who this man is. That he couldn't be more passive indicates something is inherently wrong with this man. No wonder he spends most of the time alone in this movie, unable to connect.
But the arrival of the letter -- written on a typewriter in pink stationery and enclosed in an equally pink envelope acts as a catalyst to push this man out of his shell and into the world of the living. A friend and neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), tracks down five females with whom he could have been involved with at the time, this fathering this unknown son. Off Don goes to see which of them is the mother, less out of an actual interest as much as a way of knowing what has become to these women.
They couldn't be more disparate in nature: Laura (Sharon Stone), the first, is carefree and bears the mark of a fading beauty, a woman who was once stunning and still is, in a bleached way. Her daughter, appropriately named Lolita (Alexis Dziena), shamelessly flirts with Don while talking on her cell phone and again the question arises: what does this ineffectual man have that seems to attract women? The second is Dora (Frances Conroy). Married into success, she is the shadow of a woman who was once something of a hippie, but has since become a successful real-estate agent living in complacency -- the perfect North-American housewife. Except that she has no children, and seems to harbor some feelings for Don as conveyed in her sad eyes, and wistful body language.
Carmen comes next. Played by Jessica Lange, she is a woman who might have been involved with Don at one point, but now seems to have traded his gender for the female (Chloe Sevigny, acting as her assistant in the business Lange runs). There is little in common with Carmen and Don, but he has less in common with Penny (Tilda Swinton), a woman who lives in trailer-park hell and whom he has swift but ferocious altercation with... or the other way around. She was the one who abandoned Don, and would rather never see him again, and the mention of a son blows things out of proportion as two men beat him unconscious, not before he gets a glimpse of a pink typewriter cast dejected on the ground some feet away. Could she be the one? The fifth, Michelle, is dead. Murray has a silent scene, sitting forlorn in front of this woman's tomb, looking as if he is about to cry. He never does, which makes this quiet scene even more emotional.
Bill Murray has here what could be the role that has him out-do the sad man he played in LOST IN TRANSLATION. His impassivity is something not many actors could do, with those semi-dead eyes and that limpness that suggests a man slowly melting into silent desperation -- a man who cannot relate with people even as he tries. Even his conversations with his neighbor seem drained of real life... he seems to be on autopilot, at first going through the motions, later developing a real interest in solving this mystery and patching things up, if such a thing is indeed possible.
The women, however, all have brief roles, and all create plausible roles that leave an impression long after they've been gone from the screen altogether, which brings a feeling of something vital that Don has lost -- maybe irrevocably so. With the exception of Tilda Swinton's majestic fury, all of them have a sadness just brimming below the surface, expressed differently, in their own acting styles.
Jim Jarmusch has made a film that is as European as can be -- a film that offers no clear solutions of what this letter may mean, or if Don has reached some form of understanding of himself. For an American director to be able to make this kind of movie that would only appeal to a select public and be successful is an event in its own. His movie, like Antonioni's BLOW UP, is less about a mystery than about the emptiness within a man who has left a lot of unsolved issues behind.