Broken Flowers

Winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival, Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers is layered with sophisticated symbolism, amusing wordplay and a strong cast, yet it remains an unsatisfying film. 

In one of his better roles, Bill Murray plays Don Johnston, a man who has amassed a lot of time and money on his hands while letting many women slip through his fingers. Intermixing a comical play on the names of “Miami Vice” star Don Johnson and the great lover “Don Juan,” the determinedly bachelor Don has just been dumped by his latest lover, Sherry (Julie Delpy), for no explicable reason. However, Sherry is clearly younger than Don and that will figure in greatly as we meet the rest of Don’s past lovers, who have matured emotionally while he has not. Don responds to Sherry’s departure by watching old movies like The Private Life of Don Juan with Douglas Fairbanks. With more money than imagination the suburbanite finds camaraderie in television and nostalgia. 

Too coincidentally, on the same day Sherry splits, Don receives an anonymous letter in the mail from a former lover informing him that he has a 19-year old son who may be out searching for the dad he never met. Still preferring television and self pity to paternity and maturity, Don displays no interest in the offspring matter. Unfortunately for Don’s inertia, his neighbor and closest friend, Winston (Jeffery Wright), encourages Don to look into the matter. 

A budding detective when he is not working at one of his jobs, Winston insists Don should find out the truth. Don is still not interested, but the viewer acquainted with Jarmusch films knows he will soon be traveling. The writer-director of Permanent Vacation, Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Dead Man, Jarmusch’s films often have themes about how travel subtly changes the man -- not necessarily for the better -- and Broken Flowers follows suit. 

Don’s first stop is Laura’s house. A working class house bordering on trailer trash, Don is greeted at the door by Lolita (Alexis Dziena). Wearing only a bathrobe, Lolita -- an intentional reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous nymph -- invites Don inside the house for some dessert. Don declines the dessert but enters the house and waits. Inspired by his nonchalance, Lolita attempts to seduce him, but her ploy induces Don to run out of the house and right into Laura (Sharon Stone). Don is very lucky he ran out of the house when did; he would have been in a lot of trouble if he remained. 

Don’s next visit is Dora (Frances Conroy). Dora’s house is as every bit as vulgar as Laura’s house but for different reasons. Unlike Laura, Dora is married, but her unhappy family of two is unhappy in its own special way (to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy). An Ibsen heroine of sorts, Dora is living in urban sprawl hell. 

Don’s third stop is to see Carmen (Jessica Lange). Carmen is a person who helps people talk to their pets. Like her patients, one assumes, Carmen would rather talk to animals than people, especially Don. The encounter is surprisingly dull. In many ways the film’s conceit about human beings not being able to converse has been leading up to this scene. Instead of exploring the insurmountable distance human beings can experience from one another, the film goes for a few, rather obvious, jokes. Feelings are neither expressed verbally nor visually. 

In line with the film’s buildup against Don, in all of his manifestations, Don’s visit to Penny (Tilda Swinton) is full of rage and suppressed emotion. Talk is too cheap. 

Through this episodic journey, Don realizes these four women have been scarred by Don’s indifference and his encounters with them slowly build up the film’s narrative against this so-called Don Juan. Laura is sentimental, Dora is depressed, Carmen is indifferent and Penny is full of hatred. Don Juan goes to his own personal hell. 

Jarmusch and Murray previously teamed up for Jarmusch’s career low, Coffee and Cigarettes. Although Murray was in one of the more interesting scenes in that episodic film he had very little to do. Casting Murray as Don in Broken Flowers was an excellent, if flawed, choice. 

Murray is a master of the deadpan response and here he lets a more anguished side take over. This is a sadder dramatic performance by Murray, more like one he gave in Wes Anderson’s self-indulgent The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou than the one he gave in Sofia Coppola’s endearing Lost in Translation. Yet the film never even bothers hinting why these attractive women found Don attractive women in the first place. Don is an emotional basket case and his accumulated wealth came later in life. Was it just Don’s/Murray’s appearance?