BROKEN FLOWERS

-By Erica Abeel

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The premise: A graying Don Juan named Don Johnston (Bill Murray) receives an anonymous letter from a former gal pal, announcing he's the father of a 19-year-old son. The somnolent Don is prodded into investigating this "mystery" by neighbor and amateur sleuth Winston (Jeffrey Wright). The pair compile a list of Don's old lovers-and presto (or rather, lentissimo, in this sluggishly paced affair), he's on a cross-country road and air quest for mystery mom.

Broken Flowers is a higher-concept, more accessible (and pandering?) film than we normally get from Jim Jarmusch. Bill Murray fans will kvell over his minimalist non-acting. In cameos as Don's women, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton and Julie Delpy all nail their characters in just a few quick strokes. And the soundtrack-as always with Jarmusch-is delicious. Yet though the film took the Grand Prix in Cannes, many viewers may find it low-energy, at times monotonous, and rarely funny compared to this auteur's hilarious and less mainstream earlier works.

As Don haphazardly sets forth on his quest, most of his exes manage improbably to be home when he pops up, bouquet in hand. Laura (a vulpine Sharon Stone) is out, but daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena) leaps into the breach by shedding her thong in a scene that seems a cry for attention as much by the filmmaker as the character. After a night in the sack, Laura, teary with happiness, kisses Don's hand goodbye (a scene only a man could write, or Don is sumpin' else in bed). Our guy also looks in on animal communicator Jessica Lange, a great set-up for laughs that never come, and a developer of sterile McMansions, a bloodless, creepy Frances Conroy, who seems escaped from "Six Feet Under."

At least the film refrains from Hollywood-style epiphanies; instead, it allows scenes to meander with Zen uncertainty. There are good lines: Delpy to Murray-"I'm like your mistress, only you're not married." Murray's "I'm a stalker in a Taurus" and "I was in computers and girls." With a minimalism that ought to be branded, Murray can convey his reaction to Lolita in the buff merely by making his eyes appear rounder. The fades to black that segment the scenes lend a jazzy, episodic feel. And we get a quixotic tour of America, ranging from Edward Hopperesque subdivisions to remote, hardscrabble cabins. I suppose Don could be read as a Jarmusch-style "dead" man, who's dragged back among the living. But do we care? The unresolved ending will tickle some, annoy others. Most damning, the auteur's unbeatable weirdness here mutates into preciosity.
-Erica Abeel