October 10, 2005

Broken Flowers (2005) ****

Directed by Jim Jarmusch, ''Broken Flowers'' isn't at all an erotic film, but its most memorable and funniest scene is a brief nude appearance of the young Alexis Dziena (photo) in all of her full-frontal glory. Within the context of the film, this scene is a guaranteed laugh-out-loud comic moment that cannot really be explained to someone who hasn't seen the whole movie. Suffice to say that for once, eroticism and comedy are working hand-in-hand here (it also inspires the film's best line, ''that was quite an outfit you weren't wearing earlier''). Alexis Dziena plays a character named Lolita, whose mother (Sharon Stone) is one of Bill Murray's ex-girlfriends whom he is visiting during the film (others are played by Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Frances Conroy and Julie Delpy). Like usually in Jim Jarmusch film, the plot advances slowly, but the characters are so rich and complex that we don't mind at all. And as David Edelstein writes in a Slate review, ''Broken Flowers is Jarmusch's most conventionally entertaining film, but it's still visually rigorous, swimming in pregnant silences, and un-filled-in in a way that's tantalizing. The movie is a haunted meditation on solipsism that's full of extraneous life, that hints at a world elsewhere. Jarmusch and Murray have transcended their limitations. They've made a deadpan movie that quivers with feeling.''