| News Items: |
| Headlines |
| News Briefs |
| Stories |
| Movies |
| Word To Life |
| More News: |
| Vatican |
| Africa |
| Archives: |
| John Paul II |
| Tsunami |
| Election 2004 |
| Charter update |
| John Jay study |
| Other Items: |
| Client Area |
| Links |
| Origins |
| Movie Review |
|
Broken Flowers By Harry Forbes Catholic News Service NEW YORK (CNS) -- Bill Murray gives an understated performance that tops his outstanding work in "Lost in Translation," and independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch makes arguably his most commercial movie to date in "Broken Flowers" (Focus). In this Grand Prix Cannes International Film Festival winner, Don Johnston (Murray), a computer expert and inveterate womanizer, is deserted by his latest amour, Sherry (Julie Delpy), leaving him in a world-weary funk, staring blankly at his TV screen watching an old Hollywood film about his almost-namesake Don Juan. As Sherry walks out, he finds an anonymous typewritten letter on pink stationery from a long-ago flame, informing him he has a 19-year-old son. The missive warns that the son has left home and has gone searching for the dad he has never met. Don's next-door neighbor, Ethiopian armchair detective Winston (Jeffrey Wright), thinks this is a dandy puzzle, and suggests Don look up his ex-girlfriends from that period and determine which one might have sent the letter. Winston even devises an intricate itinerary for Don to follow. He advises Don to present each lady with a bouquet of pink flowers. Reluctantly and almost passively, Don tracks down the women he knew two decades earlier. First on the list is Laura (Sharon Stone), but before he meets her, he encounters her effortlessly seductive teenage daughter provocatively named Lolita (Alexis Dziena), who allows Don to wait for her mother, and thinks nothing of removing her skimpy robe, and talking on a cell phone in the altogether, with Don looking on in befuddled embarrassment. The widowed Laura, now a professional closet organizer, eventually returns home, embraces him warmly, and after dinner they sleep together for old time's sake. Next is Dora (Frances Conroy of "Six Feet Under"), now in real estate with her husband, Ron (Christopher McDonald), who greets him coolly, and only has him to dinner because Ron is so intrigued at meeting his wife's ex-lover. The couple live a childless, empty life, no doubt because of the quiveringly sensitive Dora's hang-ups. Then it's Carmen (Jessica Lange), an "animal communicator" and author with an overly possessive assistant (Chloe Sevigny) who resents Don's presence. Last, and most alarmingly, is Penny (Tilda Swinton), an embittered backwoods biker lady with two goons protecting her, in an episode that ends violently. Most movingly, he stops at the grave of one former girlfriend who has died, and lays flowers by her tombstone. Along the way, Don tries to pick up on clues of anything pink or anyone who might have a typewriter. Writer-director Jarmusch's wry and quirky film is a telling commentary on relationships and human interconnection. It has an almost classical construction, as we chart the progress of the pink envelope being delivered under the opening credits, and as Don methodically makes his way cross-country. The performances are fine, beautiful character portrayals all, and Murray -- tousled and deadpan -- is luminous, while seemingly doing nothing at all. He conveys Don's ennui, loneliness and desire to reach out not only to the women, but to a couple of male teenagers whom he thinks just may be the putative son. Frederick Elmes' fluid color camera work (Jarmusch often works in black and white) and Mark Friedberg's production design are first-rate. The film contains scattered uses of rough language, brief full frontal female nudity, implied premarital sex, underage drinking and brief drug use. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. - - - Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. END Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250 |
| FIND A MOVIE |
|
Looking for a movie review? |