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'Broken English' movie review |
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Written by Colin Covert, MCT
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Wednesday, 11 July 2007 |
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BROKEN ENGLISH
2 ½ stars
Starring: Parker Posey, Drea De Matteo, Gena Rowlands, Melvil Poupaud
Directed by: Zoe Cassavetes
Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, brief drug use and language.
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Nora Wilder is a Manhattanite in her 30s who works as a boutique hotel's director of guest services, catering to the needs of her high-maintenance clients. Although she is prepared to deliver whatever they want, including a last-minute dinner reservation for six at the virtually inaccessible Nobu, Nora is incapable of tending to her own emotional needs.
She's been a long time between serious dates, and is so rattled by the prolonged dry spell that she self-destructively tumbles into bed with most anyone who asks her to dinner. Indie princess Parker Posey has played skittish, sexy scatterbrains like Nora humorously before, but in "Broken English," she gives the part serious shadings of understated compassion.
To be sure the film, a character study of a profoundly lonely woman, has a sense of fun. Justin Theroux pops up as a fatuous TV actor staying at the hotel who considers himself God's gift to - well, to the planet. Clutching his personal pillow like a toddler's binkie and unable to recall whether he registered as Kurt Vonnegut or Walt Whitman, Mr. SexyJerk nevertheless projects enough narcissistic magnetism to pull Nora in for an ill-advised one-night stand.
Such indiscretions make for regretful conversations with her best friend, Audrey (Drea De Matteo), but Posey makes Nora's silences deafening. She says everything just by her presence, revealing the volatile, unstable impulses that invariably cause people to withdraw from her.
The first act of the film includes the romantic comedy staples of a series of disastrous first dates and a needling mama (Gena Rowlands), but "Broken English" plays the emotionally adrift Nora's dilemma for affection for emotional truth.
When she meets a sympathetic French musician (Melvil Poupaud) at a party, Nora's luck changes. While he's not the trust-fund preppie her mother urges her to date, Julien is open, attentive and stable. He's also due back in Paris without delay.
Nora is faced with the choice of holding onto her privileged but empty existence or following a man she is powerfully attracted to, but hardly knows. Initially Nora hesitates, and when she and Audrey set out to locate Julien in France, she learns that reconnecting with a virtual stranger is a daunting task.
Although it's conventionally filmed and rather flat looking, the first dramatic feature written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes displays a good deal of her father John's appreciation for unembellished honesty. The ending doesn't guarantee Posey's character bliss, but you feel relieved she's moving in the right direction at last.
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