Broken Flowers (R, 2005)

BROKEN FLOWERS follows aging lothario Don Johnston (Bill Murray) as he comes to terms with his life and likely legacy. A technophobe millionaire, Don is more a vacancy than an emotional center. He first appears seated on his sofa, watching Douglas Fairbanks in The Private Life of Don Juan, as his girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) leaves in a huff. But then he gets a letter, on pink stationery, with no return address or signature, saying he has a 19-year-old son who may or may not be coming to look for him. He's prodded by his next-door neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), devotee of detective stories and the internet, who takes up the case as one to be solved. Based on a brief list of Don's old girlfriends' names and long-ago addresses, Winston arranges flights, motels, and rental cars, hands his friend an itinerary, and sends him forth to discover his progeny.

Organized into a series of vignettes, Jim Jarmusch's minimalist melodrama doesn't build a narrative so much as it deconstructs the idea of narrative, as well as the sense that a life leads to clear resolution. Don might be indifferent, pained, even remorseful about his serial abandonments, but it remains hard to tell.