USA,
2003, 96 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Jim Jarmusch
- prod
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Joana Vicente, Jason Kliot
- scr
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Jim Jarmusch
- cam
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Frederick Elmes, Robby Müller, Ellen Kuras
- editor
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Jay Rabinowitz
- cast
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Roberto Benigni, Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Cate Blanchett, Jack White, RZA, Taylor Mead
- source
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US DISTRIBUTOR United Artists, 2500 Broadway, Santa Monica, CA 90404. FAX: 310-586-8358. Colorforms Eva Saks, 11 Fifth Ave., 9 South, New York, NY 10003. EMAIL: nyevita@aol.com.
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COMMENTS
Opening Night film. Jim Jarmusch, RZA, Tom Waits in person.
OTHER
Piping hot and flavored with just the right amount of cream and sugar, Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes gives bad habits a good name. Consisting of 11 vignettes that the indie icon has written and directed sporadically since 1986 and finally assembled into a surprisingly cohesive whole, this dryly comic ode to wasting time over one more cup o’ joe elevates shooting the breeze to an art form. Roberto Benigni and Stephen Wright (was there ever a more mismatched lunch date?) woefully misunderstand each other and wind up switching identities, while RZA and GZA from Wu-Tang Clan discuss alternative medicine with Bill Murray, incognito as a waiter who swills Colombian straight from the pot. Iggy Pop and Tom Waits stumble through awkward silences and rue the fact that their diner’s jukebox features songs by neither; Jack and Meg of the White Stripes experiment with a Tesla coil; Cate Blanchett plays herself (sort of) as well as her estranged cousin in a meeting seething with mutual dislike; and Isaak de Bankole, cool incarnate in sunglasses and a sharp suit, tries to no avail to convince his best friend that he really, really doesn’t have a problem. In the film’s most memorable episode, the brilliant English actors Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan hilariously mock their celebrity status. Variously shot by Tom DiCillo, Frederick Elmes, Ellen Kuras and Robby Müller—their luminous black-and-white images perfectly complement Jarmusch’s deadpan gaze—Coffee and Cigarettes is funky, affectionate (especially toward former Warhol superstar Taylor Mead) and far less lethal than its titular combo.
—Steven Jenkins
FACTOID #4
2006 New Italian Cinema tributee Marco Belocchio’s debut film Fists in the Pocket screened at the Tenth San Francisco International Film Festival in 1966.
