COFFEE And Cigarettes is a film about coffee and cigarettes, shot in black and white, black for coffee, white for cigarettes.

Chances are, in this ban-happy world, the pleasures of caffeine and nicotine will become forbidden sins (Coffee And Cigarettes would have to carry an 18 certificate), so independent movie auteur Jim Jarmusch and his ragbag cast of actors and musicians truly worship each reviving slurp and drag.

Jarmusch accumulated his wry movie over a span of 18 years, compiling a series of self-contained comic vignettes in praise of the finer things in life. Each conversation piece is a simple set-up: a caf table, an exchange of stories or thoughts, often stilted, over a fag and a refill.

Themes resurface - fragile celebrity egos, transience, harassment, the wish to be elsewhere, the absurdities of life - and strands of conversation resurface too. For example, a description of a caffeine hit being like the speeding images from a camera in an Indie 500 car appears in two scenes, and the work of scientific inventor Nicolai Tesla also features twice. Perhaps there are only six degrees of separation between all conversations!

Jarmusch directs with a deadpan tone throughout, always at a slow, sometimes funereal pace, his humour full of whimsy and subversion but prone to moments of idiosyncrasy that slip towards pretension. That smug Dutch bloke from the Grolsch adverts would love the lack of urgency; Elvis fans will savour Steve Buscemi's nutty thoughts on the King's fat Las Vegas-era twin.

The cinematography has the look of monochrome film noir, and indeed the head-to-head encounters mirror that golden movie era. There are 11 scenes in all, some quickly forgotten (Renee, Those Things'll Kill Ya), some outstaying their welcome (No Problem, with two old friends in one long non-conversation), but there is great pleasure in seeing Jarmusch pulling the rug from under his company of familiar faces.

In Cousins, Cate Blanchett plays both an evasive, disingenuous movie star and the messed-up cousin that you find yourself preferring. The terribly fashionable White Stripes are made to sit in goggles as Jack talks like a boffin to Meg about his Tesla coil air transformer. Bill Murray, trying to hide away by working incognito in a caf, ends up chewing the fat with the Wu Tang Clan's RZA and GZA over the merits of green tea over coffee.

Best of all are two clashes of ego: Iggy Pop being unnerved by Tom Waits but having the last laugh, and Alfred Molina soaking up the slick oil from a supercilious Steve Coogan, only to turn the tables on him.

This droll movie comes to a sudden stop: too much smoke and coffee, but what a way to go.

Updated: 16:16 Thursday, November 11, 2004