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SHOPGIRL
Directed by Anand Tucker; written by Steve Martin, based on his novella.
With: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Bridgette
Wilson-Sampras, Sam Bottoms, Frances Conroy, and Rebecca Pidgeon. Rated R.
Running time: 107 minutes.
Reviewed by Joel Johnson
Anand Tucker waited several years after directing the much-lauded Hilary
and Jackie before deciding to make another film. Unfortunately,
Shopgirl is definitely not a film that will remind film viewers of its
Oscar-worthy predecessor. This film is based on the novella by Steve Martin
and is his own screenplay adaptation. Martin also stars as the titular
character’s (Claire Danes) wealthy and aloof older suitor. Jason Schwartzman
plays her more age-appropriate earnest, yet thoroughly annoying, suitor.
These two characters are the film’s biggest drawbacks.
Schwartzman plays the sort of character that allows virtually all but the
most repellent losers to look down their noses confident in their own
superiority. Audiences will not mourn his move to the background when he
follows Mirabelle’s (Danes) off-hand advice to follow through on a business
idea and travels across country with the rock band Hot Tears as the official
amplifier roadie.
Except that lets the audience focus more on Ray Porter (Martin). Ray is a
very successful logician. Exactly how a thinker, a theorist, an academic
becomes filthy rich is never explained. Perhaps he’s a dot-com success
story. Martin plays Porter as a shy, affable man who has everything except a
heart. The crux of the story is that love needs commitment to fully flower.
After a rather flamboyant request for a date, Ray early on shares that he’s
been divorced and that he’s not looking for anything long-term. He is
looking for a relationship at arm’s length on his own terms. Unfortunately
his emotional reserve is not just a reluctance to commit to a romantic
relationship. Martin’s Ray Porter is a man who seems incapable of strong
feelings about anything—not his work, not his home, not food, not drink, not
sex, not art, not sports, and not even the luminous young woman he has
managed to charm into loving him. The result is a dispassionate character
about whom the audience feels dispassionately and who seems unreal.
Neither of the males in the triangle is particularly credible and, most
damaging of all, neither inspires audience involvement. Does anyone truly
care which of these two men gets the girl? Does the shopgirl wanna-be artist
deserve to be saddled with either of them? While the script gives the cast
too little to work with, I do find it intriguing that Jimmy Fallon (Fever
Pitch) had been the original casting choice for Schwartzman’s role of
Jeremy. Schwartzman has definitely delivered characters with an intense,
hard-edged quirkiness (Rushmore, I
♥ Huckabees), but Fallon may have been a better actor for making
“but endearing” automatically added to Jeremy’s description of “annoying.”
The film lays out where it’s going almost from the opening. The heavy-handed
soundtrack is full of wistfully moaning strings. The film, however, is not a
total loss. It certainly does have occasional moments of humor, and its
underlying message is, of course, valid. Most of all, it has Claire Danes.
Danes is still everyone’s favorite girl next-door, daughter, little sister,
or niece. Peter Suschitzky’s camera spends considerable time lovingly gazing
at her as she bathes, dresses, works at Saks Fifth Avenue, and does all
manner of daily activities. Not since the camera admired every move of
Élodie Bouchez throughout Erick Zonca’s The Dreamlife of Angels has
an actress been worshiped so. Danes youthful wholesomeness perfectly
captures her character’s vulnerability and her openness to possibilities.
The film also features Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as Mirabelle’s beautiful,
but less than wholesome coworker at Saks Fifth Avenue. She is a major
contributor to one of the film’s more unexpectedly comic moments.
Unfortunately, the same can not be said of Sam Bottoms and Frances Conroy,
who seem to have been totally wasted as Mirabelle’s parents living in
Vermont. The film certainly fails to ingratiate itself to an audience but
may have inspired a definitive enmity within the Green Mountain State.
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2008 Wolf Moon Calendar just
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