A metaphysical fable light on the meta — and the physical, for the matter — Wristcutters: A Love Story takes place in a listless, gray afterlife where all of the deceased mope about like characters in a Jim Jarmusch film. Think of it as the ultimate deadpan.
This particular purgatory is reserved exclusively for suicides, and it looks a lot like everyday life except that everything is blander and uglier than it should be, and you're more than likely to find Joy Division playing on the local jukebox. The movie begins as a series of sub-Gilliam sight gags (think Brazil as a two-bit necropolis), with newly arrived Zia (Patrick Fugit) getting introduced to his surroundings, taking a dead-end job (there's no other kind here) and hooking up with a hard-drinking Russian (Shea Whigham) with a penchant for herky-jerky Balkan rock that sounds strangely similar to Aki Kaurismaki's Leningrad Cowboys.
Wristcutters morphs into a sort of road movie when Zia and the Ruskie hit the highway in search of an ex-girlfriend, and when they give a lift to a pretty, melancholic hitchhiker (Shannyn Sossamon), sparks — albeit muted sparks — fly between Fugit's character and the newcomer. It's a very odd and somewhat unsatisfying romance that seems to be on hold for most of the film, like most everything else that happens here, and the humor is so low-key that it's often hard telling where the jokes begin and where they end. Still, you've got to give director Goran Dukic credit for creating a world so self-contained and a mood that consistently and deliberately seems to be on the brink of inertia. There's not much more than that to Wristcutters, though, and the film winds up feeling somehow stunted or maybe even unfinished.
Wristcutters: A Love Story (R) Stars Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Shea Whigham, Tom Waits, Leslie Bib, Mikal Lazarev, Mark Boone Jr., Abraham Benrubi and Azura Skye. Opens Nov. 2 at local theaters. 3 stars
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2007.