Review of Shopgirl (2005) by Emily A — 24 Apr 2012

This movie is small, quiet and very honest. It was kind of interesting the way, even though the film is called Shopgirl, Mirabelle is pretty much the least interesting character in the film. Ray is probably the most interesting, while Jeremy is an insufferable caricature of a twenty-something screw-up.

This movie reminded me a lot of Closer, in that it had little in the way of forward-momentum story-wise. The core of this film was in the way its characters interacted and shaped each other. It bothered me a little bit that all it took to turn Jeremy from a self-absorbed, awkward twerp to a real human being was a little while on tour and listening to an audiobook about relationships.

It seemed like something of a cop-out; there's really no social Band-Aid solution for social ineptitude. If there were, I'd be going around fixing people left and right. One of the only other things I didn't like was the voice-over narration; I would have much rather made up my own mind about the proceedings, as opposed to being told what to think about it by Ray (of all people).

Ray isn't the bad guy here, any more than Jeremy is the good guy, and I think to paint them as such really sells this complex little movie short. In fact, I think the biggest pleasure I got from this movie is figuring the characters out.

I could tell when Ray was talking to his therapist that he and Mirabelle were going to get hurt, if only because that's what happens when people want different things from their relationship and don't know about that conflict.

This was an endlessly interesting movie, real and sweet and not so much funny as droll. I love puzzle films.