Stranger Than Paradise

Jim Jarmusch's debut won the Best First Feature at Cannes in 1984, and is the ultimate laid-back cool movie, putting Jarmusch on the movie map alongside Federico Fellini and Wim Wenders as an alternative great. It also established his recurrent theme as a stranger getting to grips with an alien culture, whose dreams are confronted with the mundane reality of life in the hoped-for "paradise".

The stranger here is Eva, just arrived from Budapest to stay with her cousin Willy in New York. Armed wfth a Screamin' Jay Hawkins tape, she imagines America can be her paradise since this is where he comes from and "he's a wild man, so bug off". This search for paradise leads her via Cleveland (and the brilliant Aunt Lotte stealing the film) down to Florida with Willy and his trusty sidekick Eddy. Incidentally, John Lurie who plays the character of Willy in the film, also provides the moody classical soundtrack.

The film has the naive spark of a first feature, and Jarmusch has yet to match brilliantly observed scenes such as Willy's explanation of a TV dineer, or his attempt to tell a joke to Eva. Stylistically, the film is immaculate. Director of photography Tom DiCillo has done his job impeccably with the stark black and white images, and eventual Jarmusch trademark devices such as the parallel tracking shots of characters walking are given their first airing here. One query though - how is it that a barren wasteland like Cleveland spawns such brilliant characters as Aunt Lotte?

Review by Philip Kelley
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95