Shopgirl Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)November 13th, 2005
Shopgirl
Reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
Rating: 3 out of 4
Director:
Cast: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman Screenplay: Steve Martin (based upon his novella)
MPAA Classification: R
Shopgirl was a difficult film for me to understand. I liked it-I'm sure of that-but I can't seem to put my finger on what worked and what didn't. The best way I've come to think about it is as a band. The band broke onto the popular scene a couple years earlier with Lost in Translation. It was new, stylish, and completely affecting. It touched on intangible feelings of middle-aged fears and youthful romantic dispositions, all while staying lost within a foreign country. Shopgirl is this band's sophomore effort (the film's are actually written and directed by different, unrelated people). The band like the ideas it formed with Lost in Translation, but wants to make them more accessible and dramatic. They want to keep their sound, but go in a different direction. Thankfully, Shopgirl is no sophomore slump for this metaphoric band. But it's an outing with its flaws and definite qualities.
Shopgirl is the film adaptation of Steve Martin's recent literary outing of the same title. Similar to Lost in Translation, his film deals with the relationships of a girl with two men; one a man her age and the other a man much her senior. It sounds more scandalous than it is; Shopgirl is no Closer, after all. Claire Danes plays the girl, Mirabelle, who's moved out to Los Angeles from her home in Vermont to find her place in the fast lane. The fast lane for Mirabelle, however, is working the desolate, lonely glove department at Saks Fifth Avenue from nine to five. Doing laundry one day, she's approached by the stringy, neurotic boy-man Jeremy, played by Jason Schwartzman. Dodging about with stuttered explanations and funky insecurity, Jeremy manages to ask Mirabelle out for a date, and being the bored nine-to-fiver she is, Mirabelle accepts. The date goes awkwardly, ending without a kiss, but with a fledgling scrap of hope for the boy, and leaves Mirabelle expectedly unsatisfied. She soon after meets Ray Porter, the rich, divorced, and wanting man much her senior, played by Steve Martin. She's forgotten of Jeremy, whose now out on tour with a band for several months, and is promptly swept up by Ray's boring eloquence. This is where I start to get fuzzy on the story. Continuing further would ask of me to explain Ray and Mirabelle's relationship, a task which may not even be meant for Martin, the writer. It's complex, simplistic, opulent, rich, and sparse all at the same time. Think the Lost in Translation relationship, but only if Bill Murray were to put the moves on Scarlett Johansson and make romance. It's a difficult stretch, I know.
Director Anand Tucker tries to cover much of his characters lives while still managing to make Shopgirl feel isolated and small; giving us the feeling of studying in depth a pinpoint of light in the sky (which is actually a symbol of the film). The characters are full, and each of them acted with complete embodiment. It's nice to see Steve Martin in roles more serious than the one he's started with Cheaper by the Dozen and its upcoming sequel. He plays the character so well that its no stretch of the mind to believe it's nearly autobiographical. Schwartzman does well as Martin's counterpart, playing a character as overtly skittish as ever. And Claire Danes as the focal character truly does wonders. My only complaint with the cast would be in its narration, which comes in occasionally, reminding us of the symbolic overtones. It's read by Martin, but seems to, oddly enough, just be read. He doesn't fit as the omnipresent narrator. Maybe it's because he's the original author of the material, or maybe because we're so used to his comedic side, or maybe even because he also plays a major role; either way, the narration comes across wrong.
Shopgirl kind of lingers in your memory. I walked out of the film feeling it was a interesting blend of a romantic comedy and a serious, sexually driven drama (think Closer). Only, now, I feel it fits into none of these genre deductions, and deserves a place alongside Lost in Translation and all the other beautiful films of intangible flights of thought. But, of course, Shopgirl has its flaws. Anand Tucker seems to be the wrong director for this picture. He does well enough, I suppose; but where the film could stand to be stylistic, it feels generic and even drab. Some of this, I know, is for the mood of extreme isolation within the limitless confines of people in L.A., but Shopgirl looks mysteriously uninspired.
But in the segments that count, Shopgirl succeeds. It has a reliable symptom for powerful drama, especially when it comes to sexual encounters, complementing them with some of the few gorgeous shots of the film and a score that invokes great, imposing overtones that seem to foreshadow looming changes. It's a fine-borderline great-film that delves deep into ideas of relationships, fate, and being loved in a very large world.
-www.samseescinema.com
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