What’s the Story?

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.

Is It Any Good?

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.

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Cast & Film Details

Studio

Focus Features

Director

Jim Jarmusch

Cast

• Bill Murray
• Sharon Stone
• Julie Delpy

Genre

Drama

Run time

105 minutes

Theatrical release

8/4/2005

DVD release

1/3/2006

MPAA rating

R

MPAA explanation

language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use

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