Permanent Vacation

Jim Jarmusch's 16mm feature debut, made not long after the writer/director graduated from film school, is an oblique study of a young man (Parker) adrift on the streets of New York. As he roams, he has chance encounters with a car thief, a saxophone player and a grizzled war veteran, among others. Learning their stories, he begins to seem more and more isolated. Even his relationship with his girlfriend (Gastil) is coming under strain. Perhaps the film doesn't have quite the charm of its successor, Stranger Than Paradise, but Jarmusch's freewheeling episodic approach to storytelling is already evident.