Broken Flowers

Bill Murray stars in Jim Jarmusch's artistic and very quite Broken Flowers, about Don Johnston, a retired man who, right after his girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) leaves him, receives a pink letter from a former flame telling him that he has a son she raised all by herself, but now he's 19 and he left home maybe in search of his father. The letter is anonymous though, and so Don, after getting convinced by his neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright), embarks in an adventure to his past to find the women he was with 20 years ago in search of the mother of his possible son.

Jarmusch's films are the love or hate type. Coffee & Cigarettes was good, though it was more interesting to see all those actors and singers interact than what they were actually talking about. I liked it, most of it. Now Broken Flowers is more of a normal movie, with a normal plot and just one central character. There's a lot to like, or hate, depending on your mood when you see the movie.
The pace of the movie is very slow, mostly because of the transitions between scenes. The movie is 2 hours long, but there are around 25 minutes of Bill Murray just driving his car, looking at the street from his hotel's porch or even just staring at nothing sitting in his house. Those 25 minutes are not all at the same time of course but still, they feel like they're just there to fill the 2 hours. Or is just a very artistic style that didn't work at its fullest for me, but might for other considering that the movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year.

The acting is very good though, excellent actually. Or it could be taking as just sitting in front of a camera, because that happens a lot. I loved it, starting with Bill Murray's numb performance as Don, not Johnson, a recurrent joke in the movie. Murray looks very old here, but he's still great. Even when stuff is happening (his non-stop talking neighbor, a naked teen walking around him, dinner with one a former ex and her husband) all he does is be still and quite, but you can see him 'mind-acting' if you like, just moving his eyes a little bit maybe and you know he's giving an excellent performance. Is it award worthy? I don't know. I think that any more normal acted performance would beat him though we haven't had many this year except Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man.

The award worthy performance of the movie goes to Jeffrey Wright (from HBO's Angels in America). He plays Winston, Don's neighbor and a man with 3 jobs and big family. Still, he finds time to play Sherlock Holmes with the help of his beloved internet which still amuses him. And I say still because is set in today's world, though it has an early 90s feeling. And that we have not idea where it takes place doesn't help, as the letter Don receives shows his address as somewhere in a state abbreviated 'NT'.
But anyway, Winston loves to investigate stuff, whatever it is, and so he grabs the pink letter, asks Don to give him a list of his girlfriends from 20 years ago, and thanks to the magic of the internet he finds where they all are, and how to get to their houses. He also books hotels and cars and plane tickets. All Don has to do is go and show up at their houses with pink flowers, and look for clues (pink stationary or a typewriter with red ink like the letter) Winston tells him.
Winston is not very much in the movie, maybe 15 minutes tops, but Jeffrey Wright rules all that time. It's a comedic performance but it feels so natural and real that is just perfect.

The women are all good though they are there just for a couple of minutes as the movie is all Murray really.
Sharon Stone plays Laura, Don's first stop. She's recent widow after her car racing husband died in a race some time ago. She lives with her daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena), the aforementioned naked teen who flirts a lot with Don when they are waiting for her mom to get home. After Laura comes Frances Conroy as Dora, a real estate agent living happily married to her husband Ron (Christopher McDonald) who is also a real estate agent. Third is Jessica Lange as Carmen, an animal communicator who is also married now, but may be having a lesbian relation with her assistant (Chloe Sevigny). And finally comes Tilda Swinton as Penny, the only one who still hates him even though it was her that left him.
I shouldn't say finally though because Don makes one final stop to cemetery where his fifth girlfriend from that time is buried as she died a few years ago.

*SPOILERS*
Don never asks if she's the one that sent him the letter, he just looks for clues, mostly pink stuff, and they all have something that Winston would say it was her. Penny has a pink typewriter though, and she screams when he asks her if she ever had a son. But Dora has pink stationary in her business cards, it could've also been her. I don't think it was Laura or Carmen.
After Don comes back, he receives another pink letter, different envelope size notes Winston, though he would like to investigate the writing to see if it matches the original letter. This letter is not anonymous though, it's from Sherry, telling him that she still likes him if he wants to try again. And this opens a new possibility, as the first letter might have been an attempt from Sherry to shake him up, and there's no son at all.
But then there's an encounter with a traveling kid in search of something, it could be the son, but Don just scares him away when he acts fatherly without even knowing if its him or not. And just as the kid runs away from Don we see this other kid who passes by in a car and stares at Don. It could also be him only that we'll never know, because that's when the movie ends.
Broken Flowers makes us care for Don's quest but then it leaves us not knowing anything at all. It's not for everybody, and I was not sure how I felt about it at first. It's slow, mostly uneventful, and again, very quite. It's beautiful.