Review of Shopgirl (2005) by Markb. — 21 Nov 2005

I had my doubts about Claire Danes, but she not only completely overcame all of them--she obliterated them. I walked into screenwriter-star Steve Martin's adaptation of his own witty, sensitive novella about a shy Saks Fifth Avenue clerk looking for love and, more importantly, for her place in the world questioning Danes' casting because I believed that she was too traditionally pretty to meet the role's demands; I thought a plainer or at least less conventionally attractive actress would've been a much more appropriate choice.

But as it turns out, the character of Mirabelle fits Danes...well, like a glove. She not only captures the shopgirl's loneliness, ungainliness (more imagined than real) and slight but palpable sense of social displacement beautifully and without a single false move, but in doing so gives what is truly one of the 3 or 4 best performances of 2005.

(This even extends to Danes' nude scene: when she presents herself to the man she thinks she's in love with, she does so with such unabashed vulnerability that it makes you ache...and not in the usual sense.

) As for Martin,who plays Mirabelle's wealthy, cultured,emotionally detached (or so he thinks) and indecisive lover Ray, he once again shows us a brand new side of his talents. I've always really admired Martin's eagerness to try completely new challenges and to reinvent himself--he interspersed his silly, Carl Reiner-directed farces like The Jerk and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid with the dark, challenging Depression-era musical Pennies From Heaven, and thankfully he's giving us a momentary break from such forgettable, machine-tooled fare as Bringing Down the House and Cheaper by the Dozen with a rich, mulitlayered characterization.

Danes and Martin make Shopgirl well worth seeing, as do some wonderfully well-observed touches from director Anand Tucker: I loved Ray's reaction to the futon that apartment-dweller Mirabelle uses as a living room couch, and the way that Ray DOESN'T watch Mirabelle try on the expensive, form-fitted dress he bought for her.

However, Shopgirl also contains two potentially fatal elements that almost kill the deal. One is Jason Schwartzman's characterization of semi-slacker Jeremy, a guy Mirabelle briefly dates before discovering Ray; nothing wrong with Schwartzman (Rushmore) himself, who as an actor does what he's asked here, but the character is so unbelievably gauche and irritating that it snaps any sense of credulity that even someone as insecure as Mirabelle would ever show any interest in him, however faint, and even an eleventh-hour attempt at self-improvement doesn't help.

(Remember this year's earlier romantic comedy/spoof The Baxter, which focused on the "other guy" in a triangle--the one who's not the male lead? Well, Jeremy doesn't even qualify as a baxter--a melvin would be more like it!) The other major liability is Barrington Pheloung's string-and-piano-heavy score, which is the most oppressive, nakedly manipulative musical assault on a movie audience's emotions since the normally capable Marc Shaiman's sledgehammer job in Patch Adams seven years ago.

Pheloung strains mightily to sell us on the pathos of Mirabelle's situation, but since Danes is doing such a fine and admirable job of communicating it all by herself with no need of unsolicited help from the orchestra pit, his efforts are an insult both to the integrity of Danes' work and to our intelligence.