Review of Broken English: Three Songs by Marianne Faithfull (1979) by V H — 31 Jul 2007

[i]Broken English[/i] begins with Nora Wilder (Parker Posey), a single, mid-30's Manhattanite, preparing to attend the fifth-year anniversary party of friends Audrey and Mark, who she initially introduced. After tossing on a dress, applying some makeup, guzzling a few glasses of red wine, and popping an unspecified pill from her medicine cabinet, Nora's good to go.

At the party itself, Nora appears to be the lone singleton in a sea of happy couples, a fact hammered home by her mother, who retroactively counsels that she should've married Mark herself rather than introducing him to her best friend, all of the good ones are taken, she's not getting any younger, and other helpful motherly advice.

Nora, we soon discover, has nothing in common with the fictional "Sex and the City" quartet who hop merrily from bar to bar leaving a trail of empty cosmo glasses and discarded bachelors in their wake. For Nora, who spends her days attending to the needs of the rich and whiny in her job as an uber-concierge at a swanky boutique hotel, a date is a rare and noteworthy event and singlehood wore out its welcome a long time ago.

When a mohawked actor/hotel guest named Nick Gable asks her out, Nora initially demurs. Later that evening, done in by Nick's disingenuous compliments, her own desperate optimism, and way too much saki, Nora ends up going above and beyond the call of duty, even for a top-notch concierge. She wants so badly to believe that this single night of drunken debauchery was actually the start of something significant that she trumpets the news of her new "boyfriend" to her family and friends. Turns out Nick already has a girlfriend, which comes as a surprise to no one, probably not even Nora.

This experience, rather than making Nora more cautious, actually makes her more desperate. "I think I must be doing something horribly wrong", she tells her mother, "but I don't know what it is." Next thing you know, she's on a date with one of her mom's friend's sons which doesn't work out any better than any of the others she's had in recent history.

With Audrey and Mark out of town for the July 4th weekend, a depressed Nora forces herself to go solo to a party given by a dorky co-worker who practically begs her to attend. There she meets Julien, a visiting Frenchman wearing a goofy straw hat who manages to charm her into letting him spend the next few days at her place before he returns home to Paris. It doesn't take Nora long to stop just having fun and to start freaking out and demanding to know what Julien's feelings are and where things are headed. But unlike most guys who would likely flee in terror at this point, the laid-back Julien simply watches Nora's emerging craziness with bemusement. It's easier to be brave when you live on another continent, I would imagine.

I realize that there's nothing particularly original about the story of a single girl who's all but given up on love unexpectedly meeting her potential Monsieur Right at a dweebish co-worker's lame-o 4th of July party, but [i]Broken English[/i] is one of the freshest films I've seen in a long time. Parker Posey makes Nora seem incredibly real -- not just movie character "real" either, but real-life person "real". I know that not everyone's movie tastes skew towards reality like mine do, but I'd much rather watch the travails of the neurotic Nora than [i]Waitress'[/i] abused pie-baker or [i]Knocked Up's[/i] slumming career woman any day.

I was so surprised to find such a low-key gem amidst the dreck of the summer blockbuster season ([i]The Simpsons Movie[/i] excepted, even though I haven't even seen it yet) that my sense of perspective is probably distorted, but [i]Broken English[/i] is one of my favorite movies in months. If [i]I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry [/i]is sold out, you might want to give this one a look.