Paterson

Stars: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Rizwan Manji, Masatoshi Nagase

Director: Jim Jarmusch

I suspect some may hail this quiet odyssey as a masterpiece while others might be bored stiff. Count me as somewhere in the middle. Bus driver Paterson (Driver) is a would-be poet from Paterson, New Jersey - yes, Driver plays Paterson, a driver from Paterson; it's that kind of film - with a ditzy (but loving) Iranian wife (Farahani) who makes (and wears) everything in black and white, from curtains to cupcakes.

Every day is the same: Paterson rises at 5.45, kisses his wife, eats his Cheerios, pats his pet bulldog , Marvin, picks up his lunchpail, makes his way to the bus station, listens to the eternal moan of his Indian-American manager (Manji) and starts the daily round.

In the evening, Paterson takes Marvin for a walk, with the same destination: a diner/bar, where the small lives of its nightly denizens are played out, as Paterson rests his pint in the counter.

There are some nice touches here - the mailbox is freshly askew each time Paterson returns home from work, for reasons we only discover late in the film. And, after his wife dreams about twins, Paterson keeps seeing twins of all shapes and sizes. But this is largely a film of low-key, sometimes semi-tragic moments - vaguely reminiscent of Jacques Tati without the laughs - and, if you're waiting for something meaningful to happen, you'd best get off this bus early.

David Quinlan

USA 2016. UK Distributor: Amazon Studios. Colour (unspecified).
111 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 1.

Review date: 31 Mar 2017

DVD review