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Plot synopsis Don Johnston (no, not Johnson, as folks are always mis-hearing) is an aging bachelor walking numbly through life. He has a stunning retro-swank suburban pad paid for by the killing he's made in the computer industry (a career he's so dispassionate about, he doesn't even own a computer). On the same day that his latest girlfriend decides she's fed up with Don's inability to make a commitment and storms out on him, Don finds a curious pink letter sitting in his pile of mail. The letter informs him that twenty years ago, he fathered a child, and that the now-grown son seems to have set out on a search for him. There's no signature; no return address; even the postmark isn't legible. And Don's enough of a Don Juan (ha!) that even knowing that the child was born twenty years ago leaves quite a few possible moms in the running. Mired in his own apathy, though, Don can barely muster up the energy to care. But then his best friend and neighbor Winston, a guy who works three jobs and still finds the energy to nurture his amateur detective hobby in his spare time, checks out the letter. Winston's intrigued, and asks Don to make a list of the potential women. A few quick web searches later, he returns to Don with addresses for each of the five women on Don's list (one, it turns out, is actually dead, but Winston has tracked down the cemetery). Moreover, he's booked plane tickets, car rentals, hotels -- a complete itinerary. With nothing better to do really, Don heads off on a road trip. Among his stops include a night with closet-organizer Laura and her appropriately-named daughter Lolita, an awkward dinner with former hippie-chick turned real estate maven Dora and her husband Ron, a squeezed-in session with "animal communicator" Carmen, a visit to a grave, and a trip to the run-down farm of angry biker chick Penny and her very protective friends. As the clue-gathering adventure progresses, Don finds himself having to confront his past. Review It's hard to imagine a more inspired pairing than Bill Murray and Jim Jarmusch. Both specialize in a certain brand of deadpan humor that makes you snort a quiet heh -- and then mid-way through the chuckle you realize that what you're laughing at is really sort of sad. Maybe this makes me kind of twisted, but that's always been my favorite kind of funny. Still, when I rented Broken Flowers recently, I have to confess: I was expecting something lightly amusing, albeit in a quirky-quiet sort of way. Broken Flowers turns out to offer quirk and quiet aplenty, but it actually left me feeling kinda blue. Not in a bad way mind you, but still, fair warning: this is more drama than comedy, and there's a feeling of loneliness that lingers even after the movie's over. It's weird because there are a lot of wryly funny characters and details, from a terrific Sharon Stone sending up her sex bomb film persona as Laura, to her precocious daughter Lolita blithely attempting to seduce an unresponsive Don, to Dora's fabulously bland model home -- in which there hangs a hilariously horrid painting of said model home. But this is Bill Murray's film, and his sad eyes and blank mug anchor this drifting road trip storyline. Murray does alienation with effortless grace -- no melodrama, no sentimentality. It's this subtlety, this stillness, that gives his character's sadness such weight. In each vignette get-together with Don's women, Jarmusch plays it subtle too. Emotions simmer well under the surfaces; you see the impact of these characters' interactions in quick glances and tossed-off comments, enigmatic outbursts that never fully explain themselves. Many might find this coyness annoying; the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I think it worked. In the end, Broken Flowers doesn't have a whole lot of interest in solving Don's mysteries. It's mystery itself that's more interesting than any resolution -- those what ifs and maybes, that possibility, the hope. —reviewed by Yee-Fan Sun
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