Had Jim Jarmusch's collection of eccentric short movies emerged 30 years ago, its repeated scenario - some people, usually two, chat over fags and coffee - would tell us little about its characters.
Back then, businessmen, actors, politicians, even nuns perhaps, could be expected to indulge in such vices from time to time. Now, smoking cigarettes and drinking caffeine-rich, drip-filter coffee identifies the various protagonists as being slightly outside the mainstream (and also, considering the amount of puffing that goes on indoors, as lawbreakers).
The picture, filmed in snatched moments over 17 years, thus has some sort of thematic unity. It also has a stylistic consistency. All the conversations are shot in grainy black-and-white by entirely static cameras which often point straight down at the table, revealing pleasing compositions of cups, butts and spoons.
That said, Coffee and Cigarettes is inevitably a hit-and-miss affair. There are some totally baffling segments (Spike Lee's brother and sister bicker with waiter Steve Buscemi); some wryly amusing ones (Tom Waits and Iggy Pop exchange insecurities) and at least one outbreak of sheer brilliance (Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina behave like very different sorts of celebrity idiot). Even Jarmusch's greatest fans will surely admit that the many bright moments do not entirely compensate for the longeurs.
Unfortunately, the terrific exchange between Coogan and Molina creates an imbalance in the film as a whole. Titled "Cousins?" (another fine segment, in which a blonde Cate Blanchett meets a brunette doppelgänger, is named "Cousins"), the episode sees a pompous, self-important Coogan, as always never quite not Alan Partridge, rejecting the friendship of a slightly pathetic Molina. Classically composed, with a beginning, a middle and a punchline, this hysterical vignette makes some of the odder segments seem a little precious in their wilful obscurity.
Still, even at his most self-indulgent, Jarmusch is a director one always enjoys spending time with. You could do worse. Donald Clarke
