In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, a barely legal Alexis Dziena gives aging lothario Bill Murray an eyeful in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers!
Something funny happened with Bill Murray's career in 1998 when he co-starred in Wes Anderson's Rushmore. He went from being a well-respected funny man to being a well-respected actor who could tap into a deep well of sadness when given the right role. He didn't land an Oscar nomination for that film, but heseemed tobe seeking one by choosing more and more roles that fit within that "awards worthy" category. After landing his first—and to date only—Oscar nomination for 2003's Lost in Translation, it really looked as thoughhe was going to spend the next few years chasing another nomination.
Since he's Bill Murray, he didn't take a super conventional path to that potential second nomination, re-teaming with Wes Anderson for 2004's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou before parlaying a small role in director Jim Jarmusch's 2003 vignette filmCoffee and Cigarettes into a leading role in the director's next project, Broken Flowers. The film seems to fit right in Murray's wheelhouse, the story of aging lothario Don Johnston visiting fourformer lovers to discover which of them may havegiven birth to a son he just discovered he sired 20 years ago.
True, Murray's not the handsomest guy in his age range and not an obvious choice for this kind of role, but he brings all of his inherent charm to Don, making it easy to see why women like Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, and Frances Conroy may have once beenenamored enough to sleep with him. His first step on the journey to find his son—after getting dumped by his current girlfriend, played by Julie Delpy—is to the house of his old flame Laura (Sharon Stone). When he arrives at her front door, she's not home and he is greeted instead by her 18-year old daughter named, of course, Lolita (Alexis Dziena).
Dziena was 20 when the film was made, but her petite frame and baby face make her seems substantially younger than that, even whenshe cops to being "legal." Lolita invites Don in and offers him a popsicle, that most sexually suggestive of frozen treats, but he ultimately declines. Lolita then leaves the room, only to return several seconds later completely nude...
There area few ways to read this particular interaction, onesubstantially more innocentthan the others. The innocent explanation is that she simply forgot Don was even in the house when she went to retrieve her cell phone. This is evidenced by the fact that she only casually glances his way after getting the phone, as if she just realized he was in the house. That seems highly unlikely, but I imagine that Jarmusch staged it in that way as if to lend it any sort of ambiguity.
Another way to interpret it is to see Lolita as flaunting herself in front of her mom's old boyfriend, hoping to remind him that her own mother likely looked exactly like this when she and Don were together. This is a much moreprogressive read on the scene, as if the younger generation is putting the older generation in its place by saying, "your time has long since passed." Then there's a way to look at it that's much sinister, which is that Lolita is literally offering herself up to her mom's old fling, in much the same way she offered him a popsicle earlier.
If we go with that interpretation, it gives Don's character the most nuance of the three possibilities. If this were any other barely legal teen offering him sex, he'd probably jump at the chance, but this is his former lover's daughter, likely the same age his own long-lost son would be, an equation you can almostsee him solving with his eyes. Sure, the optics would be terrible if Laura came home to find her old boyfriend banging her daughter, but that's probably not the reason Don refuses to act. He likely sees in Lolita his own history of poor decisions, once more being offered up to him on a silver platter, but he wants to prove to himself that he's moved past this and is ready to accept his duties as a father.
As to the apathy which greeted Murray's performance by the awards community, I can only guess that voters at the time were convinced that Murray was just playing variations on the same characters he played in Rushmore and Lost in Translation. It's hard to gauge the minds of an Oscar voter, but without zooming out at all and looking at Murray's career as a whole, it probably seemed to many that he was just chasing the award by taking any role that seemed to fit their usual criteria.
That's a real shame because, of all of Murray's post-Rushmore performances, this is probably his best. Murray is always at his best when he's being reactionary as opposed to driving the plot. As his character runs up against increasingly strong exes who don't have memories of him that are as fond as his of them, we can actually watch his normal smart-ass façade crumble. There's a ton of sadness in this performance, but it's balanced by Murray's natural charisma, making it arguably his most well-rounded performance of the new millennium.
Catch up with our most recent editions ofAnatomy of a Nude Scene
—P.J. Soles Establishes a Key Horror Movie Trope in John Carpenter's Halloween
—Can We Talk About Linnea Quigley's Barbie Doll Crotch inReturn of the Living Dead?
—Innocent BloodFinds John Landis Trying to Get HisAmerican WerewolfMojo Back
—The Insane Japanese Horror MovieHouseFeatures Equally Insane Nudity
—Howard Stern'sPrivate PartsLives Up to Its Titular Promise
—Neve Campbell Wastes No Time Making Her Nude Debut inWhen Will I Be Loved
—Amy Locane GetsCarried Awayfrom Melrose Place to Bang Dennis Hopper
—The Shape of WaterOpens with Sally Hawkins Masturbating in the Tub
—Jennifer Jason Leigh Gets the Drop on Bridget Fonda inSingle White Female
—Monique Gabrielle EnsuresBachelor Partyis an Affair to Remember
—An Entire Generation of Men Saw Bare Breasts for the First Time inCaddyshack
—Maggie Gyllenhaal Holds Nothing Back inSecretary
—Demi Moore Took a Record Paycheck to HeadlineStriptease
—That Time We All Fell in Love with Kelly Preston inMischief
**Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy**
