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'Wristcutters: A Love Story'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

October 19, 2007

The suicidal characters of Goran Dukic's road comedy dwell together in a mirthless afterlife that looks very much like waking life, if all bright colors were washed away and the landscape were strewn with detritus.

A recent addition to the populace is Zia (Patrick Fugit), a pouty gen-Xer who killed himself in a fit of breakup blues, only to find out that his girlfriend Desiree (Leslie Bibb) had made a fatal leap for her very different reasons. Piling into a wasted station wagon with a self-electrocuted Russian rocker (Shea Whigham) and a sign-defacing young woman (Shannyn Sossamon) who claims to have died by "accident," Zia treks across this purgatory in search of Desiree.

Adapted from a short story by Israeli writer Etgar Keret, Dukac's feature debut is studiously obeisant to the school of existential deadpan as practiced by Jim Jarmusch, and he ropes in Jarmusch regular Tom Waits at one point to play a commune denizen.

It's borderline parody of a kind of fey filmmaking popular at crunchy-granola festivals, but the counterfeit aesthetic is ultimately outshone by the life-affirming message.

WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY (R). 1:28 (language and disturbing content involving suicide). At Empire 25, Union Square Stadium 14, Manhattan. Opens wide Nov. 2.