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copyright ©1999-2003
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
Willie
lives alone in a dingy, dirty, closet-sized studio apartment in New York
City. So when he agrees to put up his Hungarian cousin Eva for a night,
as she makes a brief stopover en route to her final destination of
Cleveland, he’s already thinking it’s a bit of a hassle for him to
make room for this relative he doesn’t even know. Not that he’s
particularly close to any one in his family, as Willie has pretty
much turned his back on his Hungarian roots in his whole-hearted embrace
of American culture – TV dinners, football and all. But when it turns
out that Eva has to stay with him for ten days instead of a single night
– her Aunt Lotte, with whom she’ll be staying in Cleveland, is sick
in the hospital – Willie’s really ticked that her presence is
throwing a loop into his usual routine of sitting around his apartment
watching TV all by his lonesome, and heading out to the racetracks with
his buddy Eddie (who actually rather likes Eva from the start).
Willie soon comes to admire Eva – particularly when she returns
to the apartment one day with a her baggy overcoat stuffed full of
stolen groceries and a carton of cigarettes – and by the time the ten
days have passed, finds he’s sad to see her go. Fast forward to a year
later. Willie and Eddie have just won a heap of cash by cheating at a
game of cards, and decide to drive out to Cleveand to see how Eva’s
doing. They find her bored out of her skull in the dreary, snowy city,
working at a hot dog place and getting nagged to death by Aunt Lotte.
Which is how Willie, Eddie and Eva come to find themselves on a
spontaneous road trip to Florida, envisioning an escape to a land of
eternal sunshine and infinite stretches of sandy beach: paradise.
Review
Not
a whole lot really happens in Stranger than Paradise, Jim
Jarmusch’s first film. Action-packed with excitement, it certainly
isn’t, nor is it the sort of talky flick where we learn about the
characters through what they say, not so much what they do. What it is
instead is a strange, elegantly stilted narrative in which the story, in
so much as there is one, is generally shaped and defined not by what we
see happening on screen, but by what isn’t happening, or what
we imagine to be happening in between the scenes. The fabulously spunky
Aunt Lotte speaks in un-subtitled Hungarian 99% of the time, which means
that we can only make out what she’s saying based on her expression,
and the rare but revealing bursts of broken English that manage to come
through. And when Eva has an argument with Aunt Lotte about going on a
date while Willie and Eddie are visiting, we see Willie and Eddie
following Eva out to the car, and then a cut to the next scene where
Eva’s sitting in the darkened movie theatre in between Eddie and
Willie, with Eva’s disgruntled date pushed off to the edge of the row,
on the other side of Eddie. We don’t get to see how it happens that
Eva’s date comes to find himself separated from Eva, but we do get to
dwell on the expression on his face as he stares mopily at the screen,
sneaking sidelong glances in annoyance at an oblivious and beaming
Eddie, trying to catch Eva’s eye without success. It’s a peculiar
and surprisingly effective way to show what’s happened without really showing
what’s happened, skipping the obvious joke of watching the poor date
suckered into this unexpected and unwanted group excursion, opting for
the subtle chuckle instead when the viewers are allowed to process
what’s happened. It’s the perfect way to tell a story about what it
means to be a stranger in a foreign land – catching only bits and
pieces of conversations, understanding jokes long after they’ve been
told, having to infer what’s going on based on the little that
you’re able to comprehend. Stranger than Paradise probably
isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for those with enough patience to
enjoy the stillness and the quiet – to read between the lines a little
– it’s an odd, beautiful little movie that just may change the way
you think stories have to be told. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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