Shopgirl (2005)

Too much of everything

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

...........................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA...and ORLANDO, FLSHOPGIRL, sadly, turned out to be quite a disappointment to me. Steve Martin is one of its three protagonists; here he is also credited with the screenplay, making an adaptation from his own novel of the same name. I have always been quite a fan of Steve Martin and his films. However, SHOPGIRL left me rather perplexed. In its story-line development, it is meticulous and detailed and, as a consequence, is rather plodding and, for lack of a better word, "slow".SHOPGIRL imparts the viewer with the constant sensation that something transcendent is just about to happen. A kind of "perpetual-motion expectation", which, when it finally does take place, ends up being utterly anti-climactic. In all fairness to SHOPGIRL, at least in one sense or another, this is, more often than not, precisely what we experience in real life! But the painful inconvenient truth here is that there already have been too many movies that have shared this "secret" of life with us. Quite frankly, one more appears to be just one too many! Unless you are a world-class Claire Danes and/or Steve Martin fan, you'll be much better off if you don't let yourself get involved with SHOPGIRL. 4* ...ENJOY/DISFRUTELA?!?!?!

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is a lonely girl from small town Vermont working at the glove counter in L.A. Saks and heavily in student debt. She meets flighty artistic Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) at the laundromat. Ray Porter (Steve Martin) is a rich older gentleman. He buys a pair of gloves from Mirabelle and gifts them to her. They begin a relationship but they don't necessarily see their fling the same way. Lisa Cramer (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras) is the gold-digging perfume girl.It's a pretty little movie. Danes is such a lovely girl. The visual look is neatly beautiful. If there is any deficiency, the guys are not worthy of Danes. Schwartzman is playing his man-child character. Martin is too old and too distant. As a romance, it's hard to root for either of them to end up with Danes. In fact, I would rather that she walks off into the sunset on her own.

Steve Martin wrote the screenplay and served as co-producer for this screen adaptation of his short novel,Shopgirl. It takes a witty but bittersweet look at a salesgirl that falls in love with two men from different walks of life.It stars Claire Danes,Steve Martin,Jason Schwartzman together with Bridgette Wilson-Sampras,Sam Bottoms, Frances Conroy,Rebecca Pidgeon and Samantha Shelton.It was directed by Anand Tucker.Mirabelle Buttersfield is an aspiring artist in her mid-twenties who, after graduating from college, moved to Los Angeles, where she works at the glove counter of an upscale department store. Mirabelle's job is simple and not demanding, but it doesn't pay especially well, and she finds herself struggling to get out from under a growing mountain of debt from student loans and credit cards. One night, while doing her laundry, Mirabelle meets Jeremy, a scruffy but likable would-be musician who makes ends meet selling guitar amps. While Jeremy is obviously infatuated with Mirabelle, she isn't sure how she feels about him, especially after she meets Ray Porter, a man in his fifties whom she meets at the store. Ray is independently wealthy, intelligent, and charming, and after asking her out on a date he sweeps her off her feet. However, while Mirabelle quickly falls for Ray and he's generous to a fault with her, he refuses to commit exclusively to her and suggests they should both see other people, a prospect that no longer holds much appeal for her.This is a slim, charming, romantic story, full of intentionally mild humor about strong themes such as passion,commitment and loneliness.The performances especially with the sheer charm of Claire Danes' performance, combined with the convincingly resigned sadness of Steve Martin and the intense sincerity of the singularly uncharacteristic Jason Schwartzman, make this a deeply bittersweet film experience.Although it is labeled a romantic comedy, it is more of a coming-of-age drama which makes it a must-see.

"A woman needs to be held, even, and science has shown this, if its by someone she doesn't care about. Protective hormones are released, and the amount of hormones released depends on the degree to which she is held. The best is the complete surround; he wraps her in both arms, whispers how beautiful she is. When this happens, she feel completely, wonderfully like a woman." - Radio ("Shopgirl")Fans of "Vertigo" and Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven" should enjoy "Shopgirl", directed by an otherwise undistinguished Anand Tucker. With its retro clothing, careful location work, designer visuals, tapestry of voluptuous music and big, melodramatic brush-strokes, the film plays like a poor-man's Hitchcock, but such an aesthetic is rare in cinema, so we savour it here.The plot? Claire Danes plays the miserable Mirabelle, a young woman from Vermont who works behind a Neiman Marcus glove counter in Beverly Hills. The film is based on a novella by actor/comedian Steve Martin. Both watch as Mirabelle struggles with loneliness in a sprawling, inhospitable LA, a city which seems to chew up and spit out fragile souls. Rescuing her from asphyxiation are two men, one a wealthy character played by Martin himself, another a young guy played by Jason Schwartzman. Both seem to love Mirabelle. The film traces Mirabelle's infatuation with the wealthy Martin, a man who treats her like a princess, and disgust with Jason, who treats her as a sex object. By the film's end, these relationships are somewhat reversed. Mirabelle learns that Martin isn't interested in a real relationship with her, is using her, and Jason learns to stop being a bum and treat people with respect. The film's tale is old-news, some of its "quirky moments" grate and several of its subplots don't work at all. Where it does succeed is in its mood and style. Mirabelle's life is given a noirish, almost existential quality, like a sex drenched Hopper or Vetrianno painting, her tiny life constantly juxtaposed to distant shots of vast cities, highways and zillions of little granular people. Martin rescues her from this anonymity, these feelings of low self-worth, and is actually, unconventionally for such films, not portrayed as a bad guy. Selfish yes, but he gets her out of a rut and seems to genuinely care for her. Before it falls apart, we're also treated to a lovely colour palette – lots of blacks and greens, epitomising Mirabelle's noxious, toxic mind space – some interesting architecture (inhospitable urban LA, Duilio Damilano modernism, high street glitz/royalty, middle-class, Tuscan-style/Art-Deco apartment blocks) and shots which fawn over Danes' luscious womanness, watching as she shaves her legs, brushes her hair, fixes her clothes etc. The film tries to capture an old-school type of femininity; lots of curves, retro clothes and mannered poses."Shopgirl" was released one year after Sophia Coppola's "Lost in Translation". Both films cover similar ground, but with interesting differences. Coppola's film was written and directed by a young woman, "Shopgirl" by two elderly men. Coppola's was about a lonely young woman in an alienating city who falls in love with an old man, played by a comedian, "Shopgirl" does the same. Interestingly, the couple have sex in "Shopgirl", get close and break up, whilst never go this far in Coppola's film. Both tap into sleazy daddy-complexes, Coppola longing for older, protective guys, Martin drooling over young ladies but mature enough to recognise the seedier side of his tale. You might say "Shopgirl" is explicitly - even though it ultimately pardons its two men - about why the relationship in "Translation" seems attractive, but may be dangerous. And what's the Schwartzman character here, but the absent-minded boyfriend of the heroine in Coppola's film.8/10 - Stylish, moody tale, eventually falls apart due to unnecessary quirkiness. Worth one viewing. See Todd Haynes' "Safe".