Broken Flowers

Herald rating: * * * *

Don Johnston (Bill Murray) got rich in the computer business but now he doesn't own one. He'd have to get off the couch to use it.

Sherry (Julie Delpy) is leaving because he's over the hill. Boring.

But Don is about to have a pink-letter day, and the mail will hint that he has a 19-year-old boy who has begun to search for his father. Don couldn't care less.

Not so his neighbour, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), who has a wife, five kids and three jobs and likes to play detective on the internet.

He prods Don for the names of women who could be the mother and supplies him with plane tickets and directions for meeting the candidates and finding who sent the letter.

First: Laura (Sharon Stone), whose car-racer husband "died in a wall of flame" and whose daughter, Lolita (Alexis Dziena), is rather hot herself.

Second: Dora (Frances Conroy), now in real estate with her husband, Ron (Christopher McDonald).

The three share one of those dinners where everyone wants to crawl under the table.

Third: Carmen (Jessica Lange), an "animal communicator" - she talks to people's pets for them - and her ambiguous assistant (Chloe Sevigny).

Fourth: Penny (Tilda Swinton), yard-full of motorcycles and dodgy living arrangements.

Fifth: Unlikely. She's dead.

Were any of these women the mother? In the end it doesn't matter because Jim Jarmusch's gentle, subtle movie is about the journey not the destination.

Each encounter is ripe with loaded looks and understated details. Murray is droll and deadpan as he - sometimes too obviously - reprises his Lost In Translation performance.

The DVD's Farmhouse feature teams behind-the-scenes footage with the director's commentary. Start To Finish is an outtakes reel: the clapperboard counts down every scene in the film with moody jazz and Murray occasionally drops wry observations.

Girls On The Bus is alternative takes of bit-parters Jennifer Rapp and Nicole Abisinio wittering about hair and boys.

DVD, video rental today