Coffee and Cigarettes

Thanks to Ann Althouse for the nudge to track down this charming and eccentric movie on DVD, Coffee and Cigarettes. How did I miss this? It's a series of black-and-white vignettes with wonderful actors in groups of two, sometimes three, just talking over coffee and cigarettes, the common thread. Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright lead off in a perfectly timed and utterly silly encounter, and the film ends on an existential note with Bill Rice and Taylor Mead playing Beckett-like characters in a gloomy unspecified location. Cate Blanchette is phenomenal playing dual roles as herself and a star-struck cousin, and there's another favorite scene with Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan as "cousins". If there's any theme beyond the coffee and cigarettes it is the cousins, or twins thing. Otherwise there's no plot, but - who cares? Oh, and there's even an entire sketch about my new favorite physicist, Nikola Tesla. And a credit, in the end, to the "Tesla Coil Wrangler". Worth looking for.