Friday, May 20, 2005
Similarities abound in films from Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch.
By ANGELA DOLAND
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CANNES, France -- By coincidence, two movies competing at the Cannes Film Festival have the same basic premise: A lonely, middle-aged guy goes on a quest for the son he never knew he had.
Wim Wenders' "Don't Come Knocking," which premiered Thursday, and Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers," which debuted earlier this week, both explore feelings like regret and emptiness, and how people change over time.
Also by coincidence, both movies co-star Jessica Lange. The parallels do not stop there:
UGermany's Wenders ("Paris, Texas") helped U.S. director Jarmusch ("Coffee and Cigarettes") get one of his first breaks as a filmmaker. In the early 1980s, Wenders gave Jarmusch some leftover film, which he used to shoot part of his indie hit "Stranger than Paradise."
UThat film won Cannes' award for new directors in 1984, the same year Wenders' "Paris, Texas" won the top prize here, the Palme d'Or.
UJarmusch says his "Broken Flowers" even includes a nod to a Wenders film. At one point, Bill Murray's character has a bandage put over his eye, a reference to a similar scene in Wenders' "The American Friend."
The two filmmakers met in the late 1970s, when Wenders was working on "Lightning Over Water," a movie about "Rebel Without a Cause" director Nicholas Ray in the last months of his life. Jarmusch, an aspiring filmmaker, worked for Ray.
"Wim was very generous and very, very nice to me, partly because he saw that I was Nick's assistant," Jarmusch told The Associated Press. Now, "when we're anywhere together, we see each others' films."
Near the top
As the festival draws toward its close, Jarmusch's and Wenders' movies are among the strongest in the lineup of 21 films in the main competition. Awards will be announced Saturday.
Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" stars Murray ("Lost in Translation") as a former Don Juan who gets a mysterious letter explaining that he has a 19-year-old son he never knew about.
Murray's character crosses the country by plane and car to track down four old flames, including characters played by Sharon Stone and two-time Academy Award winner Lange.
In an amusing scene that involves a very intelligent cat, Lange plays an "animal communicator" -- a New Age specialist who knows how to talk to pets.
Jarmusch pointed out that a few other recent movies -- like "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," which also starred Murray -- explore the theme of fatherhood.
"I find it interesting, but not being a sociologist I have no idea what it means," Jarmusch said.
He added that the theme of paternity isn't the main point of his movie.
"It's more a character study, a portrait of someone with something missing inside them," he said.
In Wenders' "Don't Come Knocking," Sam Shepard ("The Right Stuff") plays a hard-living actor in movie Westerns who learns he fathered a child nearly three decades earlier. Shepard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, co-wrote the screenplay with Wenders.
As the movie starts, Shepard's character hijacks a horse from his movie set and gallops off into the rocky Western landscape. Eventually, he tracks down an ex-girlfriend (Lange) who gave birth to his child.
In "Don't Come Knocking," Lange plays a diner owner who challenges her old flame to pull his life together and get to know his son.