“The companies, the majors, were afraid of it. They felt that it’s a downer, that the main character is going to be not very likable. And they also were suspicious about the genre, because they kept saying that the murder mystery plot isn’t very strong, which they were right about! They really wanted a murder mystery. Finally they said yes. Then they regretted it, I’m sure. And now they are glad.” — Ivan Passer interviewed by Jonathan Rosenbaum in New York, July 1981

Cutter’s Way (1981)
Directed by Ivan Passer
Screenplay by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, based on the novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg
Produced by Paul R. Gurian
105 minutes

Coloring outside the lines of its literary source material as much as a movie adaptation needs to, Cutter’s Way is a damn near perfect picture of character, atmosphere and idiosyncrasy. This is a rare film that feels like it leapt to screen from the Smith Corona of a 20th century novelist without any artificial sweeteners; you can smell the cigarette smoke dangling in the air. Firmly in the Han Solo stage of his career, Jeff Bridges stars as Richard Bone, a fop who divides his time between boinking housewives, pimping sailboats in Santa Barbara and shirking responsibility at large. His best friends are a one-eyed, one-legged, one-man wrecking ball named Alex Cutter (John Heard) and his wife Mo (Lisa Eichhorn), whose sultry bloom is beginning to peel behind alcohol and her marriage to Cutter, a Vietnam vet.

Returning from a session with his latest paramour (Nina van Pallandt), Bone abandons his piece of shit Austin Healey in an alley. There, he encounters a man dumping a woman’s body in a trash can. When Bone tries to intercede, he’s nearly run over. Selling his alibi to the police, Bone is introduced to Valerie Duran (Ann Dusenberry), the spunky sister of the murder victim who asks Bone to help her nab the killer. He prefers to celebrate Old Spanish Days with Cutter and Mo, but while watching a parade, identifies the killer as J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliott), an oil company tycoon who owns Santa Barbara. Refusing to suffer the indignity of another fat cat buying his way out of a crime, Cutter hatches a scheme to nail Cord. Bone resists getting involved until his fatalistic friend leaves him no choice.

No fan of the mystery genre per se, Newton Thornburg published his fourth novel Cutter and Bone in 1976 to raves and respectable enough sales for Paul R. Gurian to option the film rights. Screenwriter Jeffrey Alan Fiskin was hired to adapt a screenplay and the project was set up at EMI, where it may have been hoped that The Deer Hunter had wet the public’s appetite for Vietnam themed movies. Director Robert Mulligan was attached and Dustin Hoffman pursued to play Alex Cutter. When Hoffman dissipated, Mulligan moved on. Gurian ultimately turned to Ivan Passer, a Czech filmmaker whose 1965 debut feature Intimate Lighting may have impressed the producer with its nonjudgmental look at human nature. When Jeff Bridges agreed to play Bone, United Artists stepped in to bankroll the quirky, character driven lark.

Management upheaval at United Artists during the fiasco of Heaven’s Gate (in addition to contemptible reviews in the New York Times and New Yorker) prompted the studio to orphan Cutter and Bone in March 1981 after one week in limited release. A flurry of ecstatic reviews and film festival awards forced UA to reconsider and six months later, the film was rereleased under a new title: Cutter’s Way. It remained enough of a marketing enigma to stay off VHS until 1991 and DVD until 2001. Meandering and moody, Cutter’s Way doesn’t have the payoffs of a popcorn thriller. As a sensual rendering of three souls, their environment and their personal aberrations, the film is exhilarating. Cast and performed to perfection, cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth lit the picture like some dingy beer hall of dream while Jack Nitzsche composed the bewitching musical score.

Whoever said that talking about politics, religion or sex on a blind date was a bad idea could just have easily applied that rule to movies. Or maybe like Peter Venkman said, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. I caught two movies recently that were the flip side of the same coin: independently financed romantic dramas ripe with political intrigue, both written and directed by women under the age of 40. Let’s see Blockbuster Video devote a shelf to that genre.

Cairo Time (2009)
Directed by Ruba Nadda
Written by Ruba Nadda
Produced by Daniel Iron, David Collins
90 minutes

Ruba Nadda was born in Montréal, Canada to a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother. She first visited the city known as “The Mother of the World” at the age of 16 with her family. After graduating Tisch School of the Arts in New York, Nadda went on to write and direct 16 short films and one feature, Sabah, in 2005. Also that year, the filmmaker arrived on the idea for a new script. Determined to capture life in Cairo as she’d experienced it over the years, Cairo Time focused on a 50-year-old American named Juliette who arrives to visit her diplomat husband, who she learns has been detained working in a refugee camp across the border in Gaza. Passing time in an exotic but bewildering city, Juliette forms a relationship with her husband’s former security officer, an Arab named Tareq.

Nadda got her script to producer Daniel Iron of Toronto-based Foundry Films. Equally enthused by what they read were Christine Vachon and Charles Pugilese of New York indie stalwart Killer Films, whose stamp on movies from Party Monster to Mildred Pierce usually indicates something different. The filmmaker shielded her producers from the logistical challenges that awaited in Cairo, but in a preview of coming attractions, the production was barred because Canada did not have a co-production treaty with Egypt. Ireland did, so Nadda put Iron in contact with producer David Collins, whose Dublin-based Samson Films had helped the Oscar winning Once reach the screen. Within two years, the Canadian/Irish co-production raised financing.

Before I express my ardor for Cairo Time, I’ll admit to hitting pause on my MacBook three times during the 90 minute running time. I wandered away to YouTube for some southern rock and videos of a skateboarding bulldog named Tillman. If I haven’t completely squandered my credibility here, I’ll add that I finished Cairo Time in one sitting, which is like professional critics saying they gave a movie an 8 out of 10. Collaborating with cinematographer Luc Montpellier — who shot most of Nadda’s short films — and editor Teresa Hannigan, the major reason to see Cairo Time is its luscious texture. Deliberate and sensual without having much to do with sex, the picture immerses us in the clamor, the color and the cadences of Cairo without feeling like tourist bureau propaganda.

Cairo Time conveys so much more about its world with silence — Patricia Clarkson closing her eyes in weariness, or Alexander Sidding, in a career making performance, politely directing Clarkson’s character through the city — than most romances are able or willing to with pages of dialogue. The film is like a splash of water in the heat; refreshing and vivid. I got a better sense of what life in Cairo was like than I could short of hopping a flight there, particularly how similar it was to any other metropolis. The events of the Arab spring only make the picture more relevant now than when it was released October 2009 in Canada and August of the following year in the States. Ruba Nadda has a passionate, self assured voice I’m looking forward to hearing again.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 3,832 users: 59% for Cairo Time

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 26 leading critics: 67 for Cairo Time

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

The Ten (2007)
Directed by David Wain
Written by Ken Marino & David Wain
Produced by Jonathan Stern, Ken Marino, David Wain, Paul Rudd, Morris S. Levy
96 minutes

Few portmanteau films can maintain a steady course throughout, but The Ten is a barrel of monkeys going over Niagara Falls. Ken Marino & David Wain met in 1993 as writers for the MTV sketch comedy series The State, which Wain co-created. The show’s cult following kept it on the air for three short seasons and ultimately, most of the cast formed the core of Reno: 911! on Comedy Central. Marino & Wain continued to write, riffing on the Ten Commandments until they had material to fill the script for a feature film. Producer Jonathan Stern got involved after working with the pair on Diggers, a little seen 2006 drama written by Marino and executive produced by Wain. Their lead actor Paul Rudd also joined as a producer. The Ten got a pass by the major studios, but Danny Fisher of City Lights Media Group and Morris S. Levy of MEGA Films were able to raise roughly $4 million in financing.

Shot in 28 days in Los Angeles, New York and Mexico City, the film was screened for the first time at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where THINKFilm acquired North American distribution rights and gave it a very limited theatrical release that August in the U.S. The Ten is like a camp for grownups where college humor lives forever. It flounders between obnoxious and tasteless, which would be okay if it were funnier. Using the same blueprint as Wain’s feature film debut Wet Hot American Summer (2001) — the last time Janeane Garafalo was given something to do in a live action movie — The Ten gift wraps Winona Ryder for her best work in decades, maybe ever, with Thou Shalt Not Steal by far the best of the sketches. Augenblick Studios provided the second best piece, an animated one. The rest of the material may bore anybody who’s already declared a major.

Entering stage in front of two giant tablets, Jeff Riegert (Paul Rudd) is harangued by his wife Gretchen (Famke Janssen) as he introduces ten stories inspired by the Ten Commandments. A skydiving mishap confines a man (Adam Brody) to a hole, where celebrity worship goes to his head. A chaste librarian (Gretchen Mol) travels to Mexico, where she takes the Lord’s name in vain by discovering her lover (Justin Theroux) is really Jesus Christ. A doctor (Ken Marino) pays the price for killing a patient as a “goof”. Two black teenagers (Cedric Sanders, Arlen Escapeta) humor their white mother (Kerri Kenney) when she brings home an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator (Oliver Platt) to pose as their biological father. Two neighbors (Liev Schreiber, Joe Lo Truglio) covet each other’s goods and compete to acquire the most CAT Scan machines.

Jeff has enough of Gretchen and takes up with a nubile girl (Jessica Alba) he has little in common with. Back to the stories, the imprisoned doctor covets a fellow convict (Rob Corddry) to the chagrin of the cellmate who’s made him his prison bitch. A newlywed (Winona Ryder) becomes so enamored with a ventriloquist’s dummy that she steals it and goes on the run. Dope fiends console the ventriloquist (Michael Zeigfeld) with the tale of a lying rhino bearing false witness to the animals in his neighborhood. Jeff & Gretchen bump into each other and attempt to rekindle their passion, with Jeff’s marriage to Dianne Weist qualifying it as an act of adultery. Finally, a husband (A.D. Miles) rebels against his wife’s desire for him to attend church by starting a club where suburban men can hang out naked and do little else but listen to Roberta Flack on the Sabbath.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 10,291 users: 40% for The Ten

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 22 leading critics: 50 for The Ten

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Cat Food”, “Rain” and “Corset” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Beautiful Girls (1996)
Directed by Ted Demme
Written by Scott Rosenberg
Produced by Cary Woods
112 minutes

Like a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for Generation X, Beautiful Girls has carved its niche as holiday comfort food that tastes great every year. Following his first produced screenplay Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Scott Rosenberg signed a deal with Touchstone Pictures. He submitted a treatment for his first assignment Con Air and waiting for word in Boston while snowplows dug through a blizzard, it occurred to Rosenberg that the real action was in his hometown, where friends were dealing with commitment as they hit their third decade. Rosenberg emerged from his room five days later with a script. Brian Grazer, Ridley Scott and Mace Neufeld were interested, but producer Cary Woods and Miramax Films won the bidding. Rosenberg worked on a dozen drafts with James L. Brooks before the director decided he didn’t relate much with blue collar 30-year-olds and dropped out.

Ted Demme wasn’t much older than the characters in the script and was ultimately hired to direct. His aesthetic influence was The Deer Hunter and preferring “Knight’s Ridge” to look as worn down and as frozen in time as possible, opted to shoot the film in Minnesota. With 17 characters packed into a 1 hour 50 minute movie, there are segments of Beautiful Girls that work much better than others: Michael Rapaport as a local yokel obsessed with fashion models, a Neil Diamond sing-along and (no joke) Rosie O’Donnell chart high, while the “romance” between Natalie Portman and Timothy Hutton remains the #1 reason to see the movie, an episodic comedy drama that never spells out its intentions or dumbs itself down. The script is a series of insights in search of a story, but after a few years, you not only feel you know these characters, but look forward to spending time with them.

Lounge playing piano man Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) scrapes together enough cash for bus fare from New York City back home to the town of “Knight’s Ridge” for his 10-year high school reunion. Willie discovers that his friends never really left. Tommy (Matt Dillon) runs a plowing company and clings to his glory days by sleeping with ex-cheerleader Darian (Lauren Holly). Tommy’s loyal girlfriend Sharon (Mira Sorvino) copes with his behavior by focusing on her weight, which her brassy pal Gina (Rosie O’Donnell) sees as a perpetuation of male fantasy. Paul (Michael Rapaport) pushes away his girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton) by refusing to accept she isn’t cheating on him with the meat cutter. He buys her  a brown engagement ring and when she refuses to marry him, Paul buries Jan’s driveway in snow.

The quiet Kev (Max Perlich) also shovels snow for a living but aspires to do little more than work all day and drink all night. Husband and father Mo (Noah Emmerich) seems to be the only genuine grownup among the group. The weekend takes a detour with the entrance of Andrea (Uma Thurman), a beautiful and cool import from Chicago visiting Knight’s Ridge to see her cousin “Stinky” (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who runs the tavern the boys drink at. Each of the guys take turns trying to impress her, to little avail. Willie’s girlfriend and possible fiancée (Annabeth Gish) soon joins him, but the 29-year-old musician confides his commitment fears to a kindred spirit, the soulful 13-year-old who lives next door, Marty (Natalie Portman). She suggests Willie wait to get married until he meets someone who excites him. By Willie’s math, when Marty turns 23, he’ll only be 39.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 4,746 users: 79% for Beautiful Girls

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 64 for Beautiful Girls

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Laundromat”, “Love Triangle” and “Shaving Legs” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

The Girl in the Café (2005)
Directed by David Yates
Written by Richard Curtis
Produced by Hilary Bevan Jones
93 minutes

Desaturated of artificial sweeteners and preservatives, The Girl in the Café is lean, thoughtful and a small work of beauty, another exhibit in the case that TV has overtaken feature films in terms of quality. A co-founder of the U.K.’s Comic Relief charity and supporter of Make Poverty History — which pushed for debt relief, aid and trade to the Third World — screenwriter Richard Curtis sought to marry the world of politics with his other passion: the romantic comedy. The creator of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, Curtis had a mainstream Hollywood production in mind, with a star like Jack Nicholson falling in love with his political contrarian at the United Nations. But Curtis discovered the faster production schedule of television would get the film finished in time for the G8 summit in Scotland, where extreme poverty was to be the focus.

Opting to make The Girl in the Café the highlight of a broadcast season raising awareness for global poverty, BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey financed the picture for £2 million, roughly $3.8 million USD. Producer Hilary Bevan Jones sought out David Yates, director of British television’s State of Play and Sex Traffic. Jones’ production company Tightrope Pictures produced the film with BBC and HBO, which aired it June 2005. In contrast to Love Actually, which Richard Curtis tricked out with every bell and whistle in the North Pole, The Girl in the Café settles into an everyday grace that surpasses anything he’s written for the screen. With a smaller scale, the Hugh Grant & Julia Roberts parts are played instead by Bill Nighy & Kelly Macdonald. Much more subdued and far more believable than a couple of stars would have been, Nighy & Macdonald are blissful to watch flourish in leading roles.

A statistician named Lawrence (Bill Nighy) breaks for tea at a café in Piccadilly Square. The crowd forces him to share a table with Gina (Kelly Macdonald), a young woman also taking her tea alone. Lawrence offers that he’s employed at Downing Street in work that requires “a lot of paper, a lot of pens”. Gina reveals little more than she does nothing and is a student of sorts. The conversation flows well enough for the socially awkward Lawrence to ask Gina to dinner before returning to work, where his boss, Chancellor of the Exchequer (Ken Stott) and his staff prepare for an economic summit. As Lawrence and Gina get to know each other over inedible pea soup and other delights, Lawrence reveals that he’s headed to a shindig in Reykjavik, Iceland known as the G8 conference, where the leaders of the free world hammer out policy for the next year.

Offering that they could both learn some new facts about Iceland, Lawrence invites Gina to accompany him to the summit. He suffers the embarrassment of realizing the room they’ve been booked only has one bed, but Gina offers to sleep on the couch so the numbers cruncher can be refreshed for negotiations. The British push for an ambitious resolution on debt, aid and trade to Africa, but see that vision pared down due to resistance by the Americans. While Lawrence suffers impending defeat quietly, Gina implores those she meets not to shrink from their responsibility to save the lives of millions. Urged to send the troublemaker home, Lawrence finds he is unable to. He vouches for her behavior and invites the girl in the café to a reception for the British prime minister, where Gina’s inability to sit silent on the issues has major consequences for their relationship.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average: Not available

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Polaroid”, “Sushi” and “Loan Payment” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Elegy (2008)
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, based on the novel The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
Produced by Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg, Andre Lamal
112 minutes

If Elegy wasn’t a movie, it would probably be a rug, the rugs that men of a certain age wear on their heads. Pulitzer Prize winning author Philip Roth had two of his novels adapted by the movies — Goodbye, Columbus (1969) and Portnoy’s Complaint (1974) — but it wasn’t until Nicholas Meyer adapted The Human Stain (2003) for Lakeshore Entertainment that the results were even somewhat well received. Lakeshore optioned the film rights to Roth’s 2001 novel The Dying Animal and founder Tom Rosenberg sent a copy to Penelope Cruz. The actress spent five years lobbying to get a film made. With Meyer tackling a script, the producers wooed Al Pacino for the role of professor David Kepesh. Cruz had more luck getting fellow Spaniard Isabel Coixet, director of My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words, behind the camera, with Ben Kingsley as Kepesh.

Under a title Nicholas Meyer coined, Elegy commenced shooting April 2007 in Vancouver. Though Lakeshore had a deal with MGM, the film was screened for the first time at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival without a distributor. Samuel Goldwyn Films agreed to release it in the U.S., with Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment promoting the DVD among its subscribers. Elegy is intimately crafted, with Isabel Coixet dialing down the melodrama and striking a rhythm that’s soulful and intimate. The dialogue is cut from equal fine quality, but the story of a student entering into an affair with her professor is older than dirt. If there was anywhere to go with this material, Elegy is unwilling or unable to. Ben Kingsley doesn’t exhibit the charm the role called for, though Penelope Cruz has never been more appealing in an English speaking role.

Appearing on The Charlie Rose Show to promote his book about hedonism in pre-colonial America, author David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) hints at regret he’s experienced for a marriage in the 1960s that did not live up to its promise. Kepesh looks back on how passion recently entered and exited his life by recalling a student named Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) in his practical criticism class at Columbia. Attracted to her beauty and sophistication, Kepesh waits until grades have been passed out and he throws a cocktail party for his students to make his move. She gives her professor permission to stop calling her “Miss Castillo”. He replies, “There’s something about you that invites a kind of formality.” Consuela accepts his invitation to see a play. Kepesh’s best friend poet George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper) ridicules this, advising Kepesh not to mix conversation up with sex.

Wrapping up a round of “pure fucking” with his lover of 20 years, Caroline (Patricia Clarkson), Kepesh receives a call from his son (Peter Sarsgaard), a doctor still coming to terms with his father’ walking out on his mother. After their date, Kepesh lures Consuela to his apartment by agreeing to play the piano for her. They spend the night together. Though Kepesh maintains to George that Consuela likely thinks of him as a new experience and nothing more, the couple is unable to move on. A relationship blossoms, but Kepesh realizes he’ll never possess Consuela and obsesses over her. She reads him the riot act and allays the professor’s fears of their 30-year age difference, but his insecurity erodes the love affair, prompting Kepesh to return to the familiarity of Caroline. Two years later, out of the blue, Consuela returns to Kepesh with a revelation.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 10,718 users: 60% for Elegy

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 66 for Elegy

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Chopsticks”, “Slacker” and “Fitting Room” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Shopgirl (2005)
Directed by Anand Tucker
Screenplay by Steve Martin, based on his novella
Produced by Ashok Amritraj, Jon Jashni, Steve Martin
106 minutes

As dazzling as Christmas pageant and equally bloated, Shopgirl is blessed and dogged by its formality. Not exactly an autobiographical account, Steve Martin drew on 25 years of relationships for a novella, published in 2000. A film version was set up at Lakeshore Entertainment, with director Anand Tucker and actress Claire Danes attached. Thrown into turnaround, film rights were picked up by Ashok Amritraj, who was sold on the property while working with Martin on Bringing Down the House in 2002. The former tennis pro’s production company Hyde Park Entertainment had a deal with Touchstone Pictures and once Jason Schwartzman took a role vacated by Jimmy Fallon at the last minute, they had a movie. A 45-day schedule commenced October 2003 in Beverly Hills and Silverlake. Several of the interiors were filmed at Delfino Studios in Sylmar.

Steve Martin had gambled on Englishman Mick Jackson to direct his script L.A. Story and 14 years later, the Thailand born, U.K. bred Anand Tucker certainly brings a European depth to Martin’s material. Deliberately paced and nearly devoid of chuckles, the approach is eye popping, a poor man’s David Fincher for better or for worse. Claire Danes & Jason Schwartzman are superbly cast as L.A. lovers who meet a year too soon, but Martin’s subdued older gentleman intrudes like an afterthought from a previous draft. Shopgirl is worth watching for Danes, whose gifts of refinement seem rarely in demand for high concept Hollywood these days. David Cronenberg’s frequent DP Peter Suschitzky provided the carnivale lighting scheme, though the musical score by Barrington Pheloung suggests something heartbreaking is set to occur at any moment.

In Beverly Hills, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is relegated to working the lonely 3rd floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, where she sells the antiquated women’s garment of hand gloves. Returning to her plain apartment building in Silverlake, Mirabelle dedicates herself to etchings, which she sells here or there to local art galleries. The Vermont native otherwise toils in obscurity, hoping someone important heralds her unique talent. At the Launder Land coin-op laundry, Mirabelle instead meets the slovenly Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a fellow artist who stencils fonts of his own design onto amplifiers. After an awkward first date totally devoid of chemistry, she throws Jeremy’s phone number in the trash. Succumbing to loneliness, Mirabelle initiates a sexual tryst that ends up being cut short by her reclusive house cat.

Back at Saks, Mirabelle receives a customer in the silver haired Ray Porter (Steve Martin), whose reserved approach and taste in shoes catch her eye. The mystery man sends Mirabelle a gift of gloves attached to a dinner invitation, which she accepts after he pays her work station another visit. A Seattle logistician who rents a home in Los Angeles so he won’t have to spend time packing when visits, Ray plays it proper with the emotionally maturing Mirabelle, making a speech the morning after they consummate their affair that his job doesn’t permit a long-term relationship. Mirabelle translates this as Ray planning on being with her long term as soon as work permits it. While Ray continues to keep Mirabelle at arm’s length, Jeremy follows her advice, showing some initiative in his field. Finding great success, he returns to Mirabelle a man.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 17,747 users: 51% for Shopgirl

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 62 for Shopgirl

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Gloves”, “Art Gallery” and “Pilates” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

The Good Girl (2002)
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Written by Mike White
Produced by Matthew Greenfield
93 minutes

Saying that The Good Girl is the best movie Jennifer Aniston has appeared in doesn’t give it nearly the credit it deserves. Pasadena native Mike White had pictured a career as a playwright in New York, but returning home, wrote two dark comedies — Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl — which helped land him a job on the writing staff of Dawson’s Creek in 1998. White showed his work to a college buddy named Miguel Arteta, who’d grown up in Puerto Rico and flunked out of the documentary program at Harvard before meeting White at Wesleyan University. A graduate of the AFI, Arteta was interested in The Good Girl, but White refused, hoping he could direct it himself. The pair tackled the controversial Chuck & Buck first and after several actresses got cold feet about playing Justine Fast, White suggested Jennifer Aniston for the part.

With Aniston on board, another Wesleyan alum named Matthew Greenfield secured roughly $7 million in financing from Myriad Pictures. To accommodate Aniston’s schedule taping Friends in Burbank, The Good Girl was filmed in Simi Valley, with the actress clocking seven-day work weeks for a chance to break out of rom-com jail. Screened for the first time at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, The Good Girl posted strong reviews and turned a profit in limited release. With humor so dry it could keep paint from sticking, Mike White’s writing isn’t for everybody, injecting brutal honesty into the hijinks. But the quality of the material is evident by the talent of the cast assembled around Aniston, with John C. Reilly & Tim Blake Nelson shining in particular. Miguel Arteta captures the langour of Texas without making jokes out of the characters or their lives.

While not extraordinarily intelligent, 30-year-old Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) realizes she’s wasting away as a clerk at the Retail Rodeo somewhere in Texas. Her co-workers pass the tedium of their day in a variety of ways. Gwen (Deborah Rush) keeps herself busy with work. Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel) slings subtle insults at customers over the p.a. system. Security guard Corny (Mike White) invites Justine to his Bible study group, which she declines by stating she prefers evenings to herself. Justine’s husband Phil (John C. Reilly) and his best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) are stoners who make a living as house painters. Justine is drawn to the new clerk, 22-year-old Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal). Holden claims to be named after J.D. Salinger’s anti-hero and bonds with Justine over their shared hatred of the world.

Justine spurns Holden’s advances by reminding him that she’s married. He responds by quitting Retail Rodeo and writing Justine a lovesick note imploring her to meet him after work. When Gwen gets ill eating a batch of bad blackberries, Justine has to choose between accompanying her friend to the emergency room or meeting Holden at his designated rendezvous outside Chuck E. Cheese. Their intense affair is put on ice when Justine suspects that Bubba is onto them. Holden does not react well to the hiatus. Justine attempts to strengthen her marriage by taking Phil to Bible study, but changes her mind when she spots the motel manager among the saved. While Holden continues to fall apart and Bubba blackmails Justine with sex, the good girl clings to the hope that the baby she’s carrying will give her life some purpose.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11,043 users: 54% for The Good Girl

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 71 for The Good Girl

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Female Artist”, “Mac Computer” and “Underwear” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)
Directed by Peter Webber
Screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier
Produced by Andy Paterson, Anand Tucker
100 minutes

Illuminating a corner of history with mesmerizing technical flourish, Girl with a Pearl Earring is vivid enough for a film owing its existence to Johannes Vermeer. Inspired by the artist’s most famous painting, Tracy Chevalier researched and wrote a novel in eight months before giving birth. She sold film rights to producers Andy Paterson and Anand Tucker of London based Archer Street Films. Paterson’s wife, editor Olivia Hetreed, shared her husband’s love for the novel and adapted a screenplay. Director Mike Newell came and went when a cast failed to gel, but documentary filmmaker Peter Webber impressed Paterson with his grasp of fine art agreed to make his feature debut on the project. With book sales soaring, Pathe agreed to co-finance Girl with a Pearl Earring. Filming took place mostly at Delux Studios in Luxembourg on a budget of roughly £10 million.

Nominated for three Academy Awards — Best Art Direction (art director Ben Van Os, set decorator Cecile Heideman), Best Cinematography (Eduardo Serra) and Best Costume Design (Dien van Straalen) — Girl with a Pearl Earring lacks the historical depth and emotional resonance of The Remains of the Day, but like the Merchant Ivory classic, it does depict the clockwork of a great house with extraordinary panache. The characters are too wholesome and their relationships probably too respectful, with passions between artist and muse kept stored away in a cool, dry place. This could account for the film’s passive reception among critics and audiences, but Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth are superbly cast. Alexandre Desplat composed a lush and mysterious musical score while the lighting by Eduardo Serra conjures the wonder and precision of Vermeer’s work.

In 1665, the teenaged Griet (Scarlett Johannson) arrives in the canal city of Delft, Holland. The daughter of a broken down artist, Griet acquires work as a housemaid for a somewhat prosperous family of six. Given a tour of her new home and workplace by the punchy senior maid (Joanna Scanlan), Griet is shown the kitchen she’s to scrub and rooms she’s to clean, the exception being a studio in which the master of the house apparently isolates himself, painting. Several months pregnant, the temperamental mistress of the house Catharina (Essie Davis) does not suffer the new help lightly. Venturing to the market to buy meat and fish, Griet makes an impression of a butcher’s apprentice (Cillian Murphy) but seems drawn instead to the intensity of the master of the house, Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth).

Griet catches the eye of Vermeer’s patron, Pieter Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), who is invited to the house to celebrate the birth of Vermeer’s son and the unveiling of his latest commission, where the quiet artist is at a loss for the subject of his next painting. Griet demonstrates greater art appreciation than anyone else in the house and is welcomed into Vermeer’s studio to give her impression of his work. In the attic, he shows her how to mix colors. Vermeer’s mother-in-law Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt) manages the family’s purse strings and observes how threatened her daughter has become by Griet. Meanwhile, the salacious Van Ruijven offers Vermeer a commission to make a portrait of him and Griet, but the artist calls it off, preferring instead to immortalize Griet and a pair of his wife’s pearl earrings.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 16,939 users: 67% for Girl with a Pearl Earring

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 74 for Girl with a Pearl Earring

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This month’s theme was hatched after someone with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for films with similar themes, “Department Store”, “Medication” and “Love Triangle” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Being Julia (2004)
Directed by István Szabó
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novella Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham
Produced by Robert Lantos
105 minutes

There’s an ingeniously wicked story about endurance and revenge wrapped inside the extravagant packaging of Being Julia, which boasts one of our Iron Chefs of acting — Annette Bening — slicing and sautéing her way to her much deserved third Oscar nomination. The project originated with W. Somerset Maugham’s 1947 novella Theatre and British producer Mark Milln, who acquired the screen rights and approached Ronald Harwood to write the adaptation. Harwood was not only familiar with the story, but had already considered adapting it into a film.The screenwriter sent his first draft to producer Robert Lantos of Toronto based Serendipity Point Films. Intending to provide Lantos with a writing sample for an open assignment, Harwood not only landed that gig (director Norman Jewison’s final film The Statement) but sold Being Julia as well.

Lantos shared the script with István Szabó, the Hungarian director whom the producer had worked with on the 1999 historical drama Sunshine. Roughly $18 million in financing was secured from investors in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Hungary and a 54-day shooting schedule commenced in June 2003; the theatre was found in Kecskemet, south of Budapest, where most of the interiors were filmed. Distributed in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics, Being Julia has a bit of that artificial, retirement community splendor that practically every Oscar baiting movie from Miramax Films featured in the same period, but once the lavish production design by Luciana Arrighi is filed away, a fanciful and sophisticated comedy about the art of deception takes off. Annette Bening’s comedic gifts are expertly used here and the supporting roles are wound with equal precision.

With the wisdom of her mentor Jimmie Langton (Michael Gambon) in her head, diva of the London stage circa 1938 Julia Lambert (Annette Bening) thrills the audience of her latest play. Feeling exhausted, she musters the energy to waylay her husband, well-intentioned theater producer Michael Gosselyn (Jeremy Irons) into closing the show so she can let herself go over a holiday, eating potatoes and drinking beer. Julia’s vanity makes her oblivious to how this might impact her loyal assistant Evie (Juliet Stevenson) or devoted investor Dolly de Vries (Miriam Marygolyes). She begrudges her husband by accompanying him to lunch with a young American, the son of a friend of a friend looking to get into the accounting side of the theater business. To her amusement, the penniless Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans) exhibits a wanton lust for the actress despite the 20 years separating their ages.

When Julia’s friend Lord Charles (Bruce Greenwood) deflects her romantic overtures, the lonely diva agrees to meet Tom for tea at his flat. With Jimmie in her ear reminding her what a good fling might do for her stagecraft, Julia falls in love with Tom. Rejuvenated, she changes her mind about closing the play and briefly recaptures her shine onstage. The expensive gifts she showers on Tom push him away until he crushes Julia by admitting he’s fallen in love with another woman, a bland but beautiful young actress named Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch). Under the impression she’s still smitten, Tom manipulates Julia into awarding Avice an audition for her new play. During rehearsals, the cunning diva surprises everyone with her generosity toward the ingenue, but on opening night, reminds London who is truly the greatest actress in town with a different kind of performance.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,962 users: 71% for Being Julia

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 65 for Being Julia

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