A groomed, confident older man sits on a bus, his sunglasses a bulwark between him and the world. He settles into his aeroplane seat, adjusting his pillow while a young girl plays with a toy horse. He wakes up in the back of a rental car stranded in a barren cornfield, his face bruised and his clothing torn. The man is Bill Murray; the man who put him there is Jim Jarmusch.

Jarmusch wrote his latest feature, Broken Flowers, specifically for Bill Murray, and it would be difficult to imagine any other actor navigating the film with such aplomb. Murray's Beckettian countenance oozes character; this is not to denigrate his ever-certain delivery, but his ability to express so much while seemingly doing so little makes comparisons with Buster Keaton inescapable.

Like much of Jarmusch's work, Broken Flowers is the story of a journey - both literal and metaphorical. Murray plays a wealthy, ageing Casanova who receives an anonymous letter from an ex-girlfriend telling him he has a 19 year-old son. His hyperactive neighbour looks on this as a mystery to be solved, and arranges for him to travel around the country visiting his exes of two decades ago to determine the identity of the author.

Through his travels, and his interaction with the film's (mostly female) characters, we learn more about this man - Don Johnston, a name which draws constant comparisons with suave actor Don Johnson, and plays on the character's repeatedly-referenced model, Don Juan. Although he is a playboy (and Johnston is always charming to the women he meets), it is obvious that he genuinely feels for them all - the double-meaning of 'johnston' is, in this case, a misnomer.

Despite his empathy for women, and his proven ability to attract female companions, Johnston is lonely. He has never found the woman he wants to stay with; the idea of permanence is something he can't come to terms with. The exes he visits are embedded in their worlds, their lives are set (or, in one case, over), but Johnston remains in a taoist state of flux. For him, happiness comes from freedom, not stability. He flirts with the wife, and plays with the children of his detective neighbour, but dismisses the idea that such things could be beneficial to him.

The notion that he could have a son, that he could pass on some knowledge of the world as well as gaining it for himself, seems to hold an attraction for him; he starts to see potential sons everywhere: a similarly groomed male model, a hungry hitch-hiker, a bearded face in a passing car. Jarmusch opens up a world of possibilities to Johnston, but leaves us to our own conclusions about a mystery which, perhaps, isn't a mystery at all.

Jarmusch has been bringing his idiosyncratic vision of cinema to our screens for twenty-five years now but, unlike other 'independent' directors, he has lost none of the flair which gained attention for him in the first place. Broken Flowers is probably Jarmusch's best work since 1995's Dead Man.

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)
Broken Flowers is released on 21st October 2005.
Broken Flowers – Official website