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Portrait of a Woman: The Austinist Review of Shop Girl (where we get all David Foster Wallace on Your Ass)
Our parents sent us Steve Martin's book Shopgirl in paperpack a few years back and we tore through it quickly, enjoying each page, but we were not exactly blown away or anything. We liked it. We found it to be a well written novella*. We found it funny and sweet and insightful and smart, though not exactly transcendent. When we learned that a movie was being made from the book we wondered how it could be done.
Thank the lord for Anand Tucker because it could be done and beautifuly.
We went to the opening night of the Austin Film Festival yesterday to see Shopgirl, with Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, and director Anand Tucker in attendance.
Watching movies at film festivals is a little like watching an average comedian when you are drunk. It's difficult to judge clearly. You are having a good time and you want it all to be great and then there's Claire and Jason and the skinny British director right there in front of you**. There is an enormous audience and everyone in that audience worships the movies and of course, by extension, movie makers (actors, especially) and it's a festival and it's late and it's exciting and everyone is giddy. See what we mean? Showgirls might seem kind of brilliant under these circumstances.***
But still, we think we'd have loved Shopgirl in ordinary circumstances. Its looks fantastic. Tucker, who also directed Hilary and Jackie, must have a thing for painting and portraiture because so many of the frames feel like an artist's loving depiction of his muse, a la Vermeer or Andrew Wyeth. It is also a film of moments, moments where nothing happens and moments where magic happens. There is a lot of humor here, but there is also pain--the ordinary kind. No trauma or major drama, just ordinary loneliness and shame and rejection and clinical depression, the cumulative force of which proved more painful and moving to us than the standard bloated, Hollywood swelling-orchestra manipulation. We found ourselves with wet faces and quivering chins throughout most of the movie, actually. It was a little embarassing.
More review after the jump.
Claire Danes is Mirabelle Buttersfield**** and she is a struggling artist in LA who makes a living by working at the desolate Saks Fifth Avenue glove department counter. Mirabelle appears to have few connections, despite a fantastic wardrobe which she seems to have stolen from Kate Hepburn, and a kind and beatiful face. Of course there are different types of beautiful. There's the playboy bunny type and there's the supermodel type and there's also something else--a modest beauty, perhaps not appreciated by your average Joe. While Ms. Danes in person on Thursday night could definitely fall into the supermodel category--skinny, blonde, and stunning, Mirabelle is someone that, while completely lovely, isn't totally out of place with the floral wallpaper. She's got a face to discover.
Steve Martin plays Ray Porter, the man who has discovered her and becomes her lover, despite their age difference and his lifestyle of wealth and business travel vs. hers of quiet nights with the cat and some charcoal. Jeremy (Schwartzman) has also discovered Mirablle, though he doesn't know quite what to with her and his, um, courting skills are lacking, at best. Have we mentioned how much we love Jason Schwartzman. We LOVE him. Jeremy is the lovable loser***** with the most room to grow in this story.
Sometimes the movie can be a little overwhelming in its melancholia, and at times we wanted to yell enough with the pensive looking-out-the-window moments already!, but darn it if it wasn't totally affecting, and, after our tear-inducing catharsis in the span of 100 or so minutes, we felt good at the end of it all.
*Where, in fact, does a novella end and a novel begin, anyway?
**Because you are practically in the front row and there they are, those damn beautiful movie stars sweeping you up into some kind of star struck moment.
***Please do not bring up your film studies thesis on the subversive feminism of Showgirls, or some such nonsense.
****And if you are thinking that Mirabelle Buttersfield is one of those names that can only happen in the movies (or fiction) you'd be right, but Shopgirl is clearly an alternate universe kind of movie where reality is heightened for the sake of poetry. Anand Tucker says he loves Douglas Sirk and you can tell.
*****Jeremy becomes a better man, but we can't help but feel that there are some character flaws that are just unforgiveable, and one of those has to be the suggestion of a baggie when a condom isn't around.
