Permanent vacation

Normally, I hardly manage to sit through films about so-called drifters. "The drifter" is usually a chauvinistic pig or an "overly sensitive" male outcast who is glorified for having balls enough to resist the oppressing rules of society. I tried to read Kerouac but after reading 100 pages of women-screwing and boozing I gave up. (That is what I remember of it) But there is also the sensitive, brooding drifter who is too "fragile for this world". Usually his fragility boils down to women feeling sorry for him (= getting laid).

For an interesting comment on the subject, read this article by Karolina Ramqvist:
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2453&a=711534

That's the reason why I was a little suspicious when I began watching Jim Jarmusch's debut film Permanent vacation. And indeed, there were lots of outcast posing; there are a lot of scenes in which we see our hero smoking cigarettes, his facial expression at the same time cool and worried. He looks ragged & cute-as-a-panda. But that said, other aspects of the film were great. Subtle humour. Understatement. A great soundtrack and a cinematography that brought both Hal Hartley and Derek Jarman to mind. Pictures of a deserted New York consisting of rubble mostly. The ending is campier and cheesier than anything else you have seen on the wide screen, but for me, it worked.