An average movie

Since I’m a big fan of Jim Jarmusch, of course, I was eager to check his last directorial effort, especially since it did win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. To be honest, I have to admit that I completely forgot that this movie was actually an anthology, something Jarmusch had done already many times during his career (see also ‘Mystery Train’, ‘Night on Earth’ and ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’). Unfortunately, I tend to think that his anthologies are among his least interesting movies. Indeed, each time I watch one of these, they give me the feeling that he didn’t manage to come up with a fully-fledged story and he resorted to give a bunch of half-baked little tales instead. It was a nice touch that each segment took place in a different country though (like he did already with ‘Night on Earth’). However, the fact that the first two segments, ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’, were actually so similar was rather disappointing. Indeed, in both cases, it was dealing with a set of one parent and two siblings who were so estranged that they didn’t have anything to talk about. I don’t know, maybe it was because it was too close to home, maybe because it was so realistic. Indeed, you don’t actually need much to drift away from your parents (I sure did) and I think that’s a reason why you should try to be as much open as possible with your kids to avoid such a dreary outcome. Still, even if it was quite realistic, even if the actors involved were pretty good, I still think that none of these characters were really interesting after all. At least, the last segment, ‘Sister Brother’, was completely different so it was a relief that Jarmusch didn’t repeat the same ideas for a 3rd time around. Indeed, these twins were just so charismatic, so intriguing, I could have spent the whole duration with them. In fact, in their case, the issue was the opposite, their lives seemed to be too cool and too unconventional. Seriously, they pushed it too far by showing multiple fake IDs and a fake marriage certificate. I mean, their parents were already a gorgeous fascinating multiracial couple who apparently came from the US to live in glamourous Paris, they didn’t also need to be a Jason Bourne or James Bond couple. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of it flaws, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Jim Jarmusch’s work.