MUBI

On a lonely Memphis night three stories begin to intertwine around a flophouse, an Elvis tune, and a sense of desperate fascination towards an America that would let one of it’s richest musical cities run down to the ground. Independent auteur Jim Jarmusch films the three segments, each one about a different foreigner experiencing the brutally depressed Memphis their own way, with a dark color tone and almost hallucinogenic subdued lighting scheme (of Robby Mueller, who shot “Paris, Texas” in a similar manner) that makes the shock of periodic brights (red lipstick, red blazer, neon store lights) pop out all the more for their misplacement within the starkness of the setting. This is perhaps more visually arresting than Jarmusch’s previous films about outsiders and hipsters on the fringes of a metropolitan society, but the storytelling doesn’t suffer to directorial pretensions, instead, the sly way the three stories connect, without ever actually connecting, is part of the film’s charms, and one of the reasons it stands out as arguably the best film of Jarmusch’s career.