Mirabelle (Claire Danes - Terminator 3; Romeo + Juliet) works at the glove counter in the high end department store Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles. Lonely and desperate for some sort of romantic connection, she agrees to go out with a young slacker named Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman - Rushmore; I Heart Huckabees) whom she meets at a laundromat.
Unimpressed by his boorish manner, she is later invited on a date by a much older rich businessman named Ray Porter (Steve Martin, who also wrote the script based on his book) and they begin a prolonged relationship. Ray sees it as a casual thing, but Mirabelle is falling for him.
Meanwhile Jeremy has become a roadie for a touring rock band, and is beginning to clue on to his own immature ways.
Shopgirl is an enjoyable, if slight, character-based drama with a couple of good comedy moments and an admirably honest take on the empty heart of certain relationships. It features nice LA location shooting and conveys a nice sense of big city loneliness, but never really provokes any big emotions and falls far short of greatness.
It succeeds however as a gentle character study, and its nice to see a film about modern romance that doesn't simply follow the rom com playbook.
Shopgirl is a more sombre film than a brief synopses might suggest, and Martin barely cracks a smile throughout. But almost every scene involving Schwartzman is a delight, and the film could've done with more of 'em.
Danes gives a typically composed central performance, but her natural poise and obvious intelligence at times threaten to undermine the character, who has low self-esteem and acts infuriatingly dependent at times. You can't help but feel someone like Mirabelle is beneath Danes.
Martin's character is never really sympathetic, and it's unclear if he's ever supposed to be. Fans of Martin's earlier comedies won't recognise much in Ray Porter.
Schwartzman begins the film as a total ass, and he performs this extremely well, making fine use of his off-kilter demeanour. His slow burning arc is probably the most enjoyable aspect of the film, but it takes a back seat to charting Danes and Martin's "romance."
And while their age gap is acknowledged in the film, and is perhaps an essential component of their relationship, it never stops being distracting.
But ultimately Shopgirl is a generally enjoyable, well made drama with several genuine laughs and a lingering sense of melancholy that sets it apart from most films of its ilk.
Recommended.
Dominic Corry
Shopgirl is currently showing in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
