(2005) As one's life vanishes into the thinness of heir … A type-written letter inside a pink envelope addressed in red ink (female handwriting) dropped into a curbside mail box gets picked up, processed, and delivered to Don Johnston's address. Thinning gray hair, middle-aged with craggy features, a world weariness settling into indifference, Don (Bill Murray), sitting watching The Private Life of Don Juan (1934 "Lifeless costumer with aging Fairbanks in title role, pursuing a bevy of beauties") on his TV set, watches impassively as his young blonde girlfriend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), walks out on her over-the-hill guy, disappointed with his lack of initiative.

Director Jim Jarmusch's original screenplay of a quirky, melancomedy, like its protagonist, partly disguises itself behind dark glasses of ambiguity and uncertainty, unwilling to say any more than Don offers the kid (Mark Webber): "The past is gone, the future isn't here yet, so all there is is this, the present."

His next-door neighbor and friend Winston (Jeffrey Wright) calls, asking for help with an Internet site. Retired and wealthy - "I was into computers and girls" - Don reads the strange letter aloud to Winston from a woman claiming to have known him twenty years ago, writing that she became pregnant from their affair, informing him that his "resourceful and imaginative" 19-year-old son is looking for him. No signature and no return address.

"Congratulations! You're a father!" exclaims the Ethiopian-coffee-colored Winston, married with children. Indicating neither curiosity nor further interest, Don refers to the child only "hypothetically" as his. Inquisitive and insistent, Winston treats the missive and its envelope with its woodpecker stamp as forensic evidence, urging Don to "narrow down possibilities" from a list of all the women he knew back then: "treat as a sign, as the direction of your life."

Independently "Sam Spade" Winston investigates via the Internet, finding addresses for the five women on Don's list (one deceased), prepares an itinerary with complete travel arrangements (flights, lodging, car rentals) for making personal encounters with each former lover, and offers advice: "Always bring flowers, pink flowers."

Donning dark glasses, silently observant of others (especially the females) as he travels (the locations are difficult to discern, separated by air travel, possibly on both coasts in leafy towns), Don, consulting printouts from Mapquest, pulls up in his Taurus rental at a humble residence (suggestion of a yard sale) where he finds a flirtatious Nabokovian Lolita, the teenage daughter of Laura Daniels nee Miller (Sharon Stone), the widow of a racecar driver; invited to stay for a chicken dinner, he also spends the night with his former flame, who wears a pink bathrobe but doesn't own a typewriter.

Next he finds Dora Anderson (Frances Conroy), his one-time adorable hippie chick, living in a McMansion with her husband Ron, successful real-estate agents for designer homes; her business card is pink but by her preference the couple is childless.

Third is Dr Carmen Markowski (Jessica Lange), an animal communicator, who acts reticent about her life since Don left, eventually disclosing she's divorced with a teenage daughter traveling in Europe, formerly a lawyer inspired by a dog named Winston (deceased) to make a career change. When she asks about him, he poses the question: "I don't have any kids, do I?" Her cat's staring, she interprets, accuses Don of having a hidden agenda; besides, Skippy's waiting for his session.

Lost, searching for the last of the living ladies on the list, he asks for directions while picking a bouquet of wildflowers (apparently unable to find a florist since previously he'd brought pink roses to the others) and finds back in the woods a ramshackle roost with Penny (Tilda Swinton) and a pair of biker guys. "I don't remember any happy ending," she snarls before getting upset when he asks if she has a son, slamming the door on him and leaving Don, who notices a pink typewriter abandoned in the weeds, to the ministrations of the menacing motorcyclists.

Finally, after one more trip, he purchases another bunch of pink flowers from Sun Green, a sympathetic young woman in a flower shop, taking them to Riverview Cemetery for Michelle Pepe's grave. Back home, noticing the dead pink roses in a vase he'd left behind, another pink envelope on the floor (from Sherry), suspecting "Sherlock Holmes" Winston of complicity in the coincidences, he treats a kid (about the age of his hypothetical son) he'd earlier noticed at the airport to sandwiches.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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