STRANGER THAN PARADISE

Jim Jarmusch’s landmark indie road movie, made on a minuscule budget, won the Cannes Camera D’Or for the best debut film in 1984. It marked the beginning of Jarmusch’s career and a school of American film-making that was fun and formally serious, drawing inspiration from both European existential arthouse and trashy Americana. John Lurie and Richard Edson play Willie and Eddie, a couple of New York slackers who spend their days eating TV dinners on the couch and occasionally going out to cheat at cards. When Willie’s Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) arrives to stay for ten days en route to moving in with an aunt in Cleveland, they regard her as a bother. A year later, however, they decide to take her to sunny Florida. Shot in 67 single-shot scenes in severe black and white, Stranger Than Paradise still feels as ironic, poetic and unutterably cool as ever.