Murray perfect in 'Flowers'

Yet with Murray, who hilariously starred in a segment of Jarmusch's bull-sessions collection "Coffee and Cigarettes," the filmmaker finds a peerless vessel for his aloof, minimalist style.

Despite a quest that should be fraught with emotion - a man's visits to old lovers in search of a son he never knew he had - Murray registers scarcely any expression beyond the apathetic world-weariness fast becoming his trademark.

Balanced against more overt co-stars Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy, Frances Conroy and Jeffrey Wright, Murray stands as a wondrous question mark just begging audiences to formulate their own answers about what lies beneath his cryptic demeanor.

The movie's structure is typically episodic. Murray plays ladies man Don Johnston, the classic Don Juan who knows his appeal is slipping with age and may not really care, putting up only token resistance when his current lover, Sherry (Delpy), leaves him.

Sherry's departure corresponds with the arrival of a pink letter from an unidentified ex-flame, telling Don he has a 19-year-old son who may be trying to contact his father.

Don seems unfazed, content to run out the clock in seclusion, listening to music, watching TV and living off the wealth he gained as a computer whiz (Don's disinterest runs so deep now that he doesn't own a computer himself).

But his neighbor and buddy, family man Winston (Wright), steps in and convinces Don to take an elaborate trek to visit the women who could have given birth to his son in that time frame:

· Loose and lively Laura (Stone), widow of a race-car driver, whose daughter, Lolita (Alexis Dziena), exposes Don to the sort of Nabokov titillation her name implies.

· Dora (Conroy) is the flip side of Laura, living an antiseptic life in one of the prefab luxury homes she and her hubby (Christopher McDonald) sell for a living.

· Carmen (Lange) should be a space cadet given her profession, an "animal communicator" who puts people in sync with their pets. Yet she's a shrewd, passionately pragmatic woman.

· Penny (Swinton) is a biker chick whose fierce and fleeting exchange with Don works brilliantly as far as it goes, which is not very far, the actress in and out of the movie in a flash.

· Don devolves from welcomed surprise guest to interloper to outright intruder, compounding his state of general confusion without offering a shred of enlightenment.

His most comforting encounter is the most passive, at a dead lover's grave. Don is at his least guarded here, the scene sweet, touching, almost revealing of the tender heart that may have once beaten in his chest, and may be beating there still.

Don seems resigned at the outset to slowly let go of life, and the women from his past reveal nothing to convince him otherwise.

Murray has been playing subtle variations on the same sad-sack theme for years now in "Rushmore," "Cradle Will Rock," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Lost in Translation" and "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou."

Yet his schtick never grows tired - it gets richer with each incarnation. Murray is amassing a body of work in a comic-drama vein to rival the madcap mania of his "Caddyshack," "Stripes" and "Ghostbusters" years.

Wright's cheery optimism is a great complement to Murray's dourness, while the actresses are tremendous foils, each an example of the woman wronged, or at least dinged, by her relationship with Don.

The vague dissatisfaction he feels with his visits spreads to the audience, making you long to know more of the back-story between Don and the women, particularly Swinton's character.

But that would undermine Jarmusch's aim, to take people on a little ride and let them crane their necks at what flits by, deciding for themselves whatever it is they've seen.