Father, Mother, Sister, Brother
Jim Jarmusch prefers to work at an unhurried pace, but perhaps it’s no coincidence that his longest inter-picture hiatus has followed the most tepidly reviewed release of his career. Soon, it will have been six years since his low-key zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die was met with a resounding shrug at Cannes, and it would seem that the coolest cucumber in American independent cinema will respond by paring down to basics. No more fun and games with genre, just a “very subtle”, “very quiet”, “funny”, and “sad” family affair gathering Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Rampling, Adam Driver, Tom Waits and a pink-haired Vicky Krieps around the dinner table. But if it’s going to be anything like his last film dealing with parents and children – the hangdog, allegorical Broken Flowers – then we can still expect the rhyming repetitions, eclectic grab bag of allusions, and other eccentricities typical of the Jarmuschian style. Marrying open-heart emotionality with his wry brand of well-read erudition, he’s putting the “home” in “homage”. Charles Bramesco
