By Melissa Anderson

AFTER JIM JARMUSCH'S Broken Flowers premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, I overheard one British journalist say almost conspiratorially to another, "Bill Murray looks old." It's rare to hear anyone speak negatively of Murray, whose second career as an indie film grand seigneur began with Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998). The actor is frequently lauded as this era's Buster Keaton, his comedic sensibility heralded as "soulful," "melancholy," "minimalist."

But when does soulful become sardonic and minimalism register as merely boredom? Could it be that what's old is not Murray himself but his lack-of-affect shtick? As taciturn ladies' man Don Johnston – a role Jarmusch wrote exclusively for him – Murray is in full middle-aged morose mode. Moping on the couch in a Fred Perry track suit, Don stares catatonically at his flat-screen TV as Sherry (Julie Delpy), his latest lady friend, prepares to leave him. "I feel like your mistress, only you're not even married," she sniffs before wheeling her suitcase out the front door.

Sherry's departure is only the beginning of Don's female trouble; a pink epistle from an anonymous former girlfriend arrives, informing the sad sack lothario that he is the father of a 19-year-old son who may be trying to find him. Don's Ethiopian neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), an amateur sleuth with three jobs and five kids, takes great interest in this letter from an unknown woman and drafts a travel itinerary for Don, who crosses the country in search of the ex-paramour who wrote the missive. Winston also makes a mix CD for his pal, which conveniently provides Broken Flowers with a soundtrack of jaunty Afro-funk instrumentals by Mulatu Astatke (this is a Jarmusch joint after all, where sonic rarities reign supreme).

With his usual repertoire of hangdog looks, Murray's Johnston, who's made a bundle in computers, could easily be mistaken for Bob Harris, the glum movie star Murray played in Lost in Translation. Don's discomfort with paternity isn't far removed from that of reluctant paterfamilias Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic. But Jarmusch masterfully finds a way to make Murray's pared-down style seem fresh by matching him with a wonderful array of actresses who play Don's exes: Delpy, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, and Tilda Swinton. It's similar to the strategy Jarmusch used in the "Delirium" sequence of Coffee and Cigarettes, which featured Murray playing off the bonkers energy of GZA and RZA.

Jarmusch dedicates Broken Flowers to the French filmmaker Jean Eustache, whose 1971 film, The Mother and the Whore, the director says, "is one of the more beautiful films about male-female miscommunication." Don's reunions with his former flames are filled with awkward pauses and near-autistic fits and starts. The characters may have crossed wires, but Broken Flowers is a shimmering display of actor-actress give-and-take, with Jarmusch crafting for each woman a meaty, if minor, role, a mini-showcase for her talents to complement – and often surpass – Murray's laconic style.

Never known for subtlety, Stone is remarkably tender as Laura, a professional closet organizer who's raising a teenage harlot on her own after her husband went up in flames at the racetrack. Laura and Don spend the night together, and she bids him farewell with a chivalrous kiss on the hand. Don's reunions become increasingly fractious, building from passive-aggressive real estate agent Dora (Conroy) to openly hostile animal communicator Carmen (Lange), culminating in the rage and bile of biker gal Penny (an almost unrecognizable Swinton, who burns up the screen in her less than five minutes on camera). Each actress's surfeit of emotion is tempered by Murray's restraint, a graceful balance that flatters all the film's performers.

"You understand women," Winston says to Don before he embarks on his broken-hearts tour. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some women (exes and strangers alike) want to minister to Don, and others want to humiliate him. He passively endures all kinds of behavior, lumbering from airport to rental car to grim hotel room. No wiser from his adventure, Don ends up where he started: asleep on the couch in his well-appointed home in Fred Perry athletic wear. The film's final act teasingly promises answers, but ultimately it's just Murray's blank mug staring off into the distance. And yes, Murray, who's 54, does look old – beleaguered, even. But animated by the talents of his female costars, Murray's signature deadpan transforms into something wonderfully alive.

'Broken Flowers' opens Fri/5 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.