Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005)

James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet in Romance & Cigarettes

Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Barbara Sukowa, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris. Screenplay: John Turturro. Cinematography: Tom Stern. Production design: Donna Zakowska. Film editing: Ray Hubley. 

Romance & Cigarettes is ... well, certainly unique. It's a marital/family drama with songs and dances, a sort of dramusical with an all-star cast of mostly non-singers. It has passionate advocates and a good number who dislike it. It was spottily released, first at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, then in the UK and Europe, but not in the United States until 2007, partly owing to disagreements among the various production companies, but also to the difficulty of marketing such an oddball movie. I happen to like it a lot, mostly because of the enthusiastic professionalism of its actors, who were called on to do things they don't usually do. James Gandolfini plays a construction worker named (no kidding) Nick Murder, married to Kitty (Susan Sarandon) but with a mistress named Tula (Kate Winslet). Nick and Kitty have three daughters: Baby (Mandy Moore), Constance (Mary-Louise Parker), and Rosebud (Aida Turturro), who serve as a kind of Greek chorus to the breakup that occurs when Kitty discovers a seriously raunchy love note (there's a lot of raunch in the movie) Nick has written to Tula. Things get heated, kicked off by a production number set to Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love," that features garbage men dancing in the streets of Queens. And it doesn't let up from there, as actors lipsynch or sing along with singers like Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Ute Lemper, Elvis Presley, and more. They also smoke a lot of cigarettes, and this half of the film's title precipitates the film's conclusion, which is probably its weakest part, as if writer-director John Turturro couldn't find another way to resolve the plot he has begun. Still, I welcome any movie that gathers a company as variously talented as Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, and Eddie Izzard to support its superb leads. I have to single out Winslet in particular for giving another performance that demonstrates what a chameleon she is. 

The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)

The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)

Cast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin, Matthias Habich, Hannah Herzsprung, Susanne Lothar. Screenplay: David Hare, based on a novel by Bernhard Schlink. Cinematography: Roger Deakins, Chris Menges. Production design: Brigitte Broch. Film editing: Claire Simpson. Music: Nico Muhly.

I haven't read the novel by Bernhard Schlink, but it seems to have presented the filmmakers with two problems they never quite solved. One is technical: How do you deal with the structuring of the story as the reminiscences of a middle-aged man about his youthful affair with an older woman? Do you cast one actor and make him younger or older with makeup? (Digital aging or de-aging, despite its use in films like Peyton Reed's 2015 film Ant-Man, in which Michael Douglas was "youthened," hasn't quite reached the level needed for a film like The Reader, in which Michael Berg ranges from his mid-teens to his 50s.) Or do you cast two actors, even though the audience knows that 18-year-old David Kross could never grow up to look like Ralph Fiennes? The solution reached by the producers of The Reader was to trust in an audience's suspension of disbelief and the skill of the actors. Thanks to the latter, it almost works. But a more serious obstacle is how to deal with the moral complexities presented by any story that involves the Holocaust. In The Reader, we're presented with the problem faced by Michael Berg: reacting to the revelation that the woman who provided his sexual initiation was a war criminal. On the page, such an ethical dilemma can be explored in many ways because the reader has time to reflect on its implications. But movies demand a more immediate and visceral reaction, and the film version of The Reader runs the risk of trivializing the moral issues it raises. Are we to excuse Hanna Schmitz's heinous actions because she was struggling with her own insecurities? Are we to think that literacy is a cure for moral blindness? David Hare's screenplay is too intelligent and Stephen Daldry's direction too sure-footed to keep us from veering off into such reductions to absurdity, but nevertheless the filmmakers seem to me to have bitten off more than they can chew in taking on a story that can't be summed up glibly. Fortunately, the acting is uniformly fine, and the film earned Kate Winslet the Oscar that had eluded her on five previous nominations. Kross is exceptionally good as well, convincingly moving from love-smitten adolescent to conscience-stricken young adult. Fiennes does what he can with the thankless role of vehicle for an extended flashback.

Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995)

Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant in Sense and Sensibility

Elinor Dashwood: Emma Thompson
Marianne Dashwood: Kate Winslet
Edward Ferrars: Hugh Grant
Col. Brandon: Alan Rickman
Mrs. Dashwood: Gemma Jones
John Willoughby: Greg Wise
Fanny Dashwood: Harriet Walter
John Dashwood: James Fleet
Sir John Middleton: Robert Hardy
Margaret Dashwood: Emilie François
Lucy Steele: Imogen Stubbs
Charlotte Palmer: Imelda Staunton
Mr. Palmer: Hugh Laurie
Mrs. Jennings: Elizabeth Spriggs
Robert Ferrars: Richard Lumsden
Mr. Dashwood: Tom Wilkinson

Director: Ang Lee
Screenplay: Emma Thompson
Cinematography: Michael Coulter
Production design: Luciana Arrighi
Film editing: Tim Squyres
Costume design: Jenny Beavan, John Bright
Music: Patrick Doyle

Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility is a less accomplished work than Pride and Prejudice, and Ang Lee's film of Sense and Sensibility is a less polished one than Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice (2005). Yet I can't help thinking Lee's the better film, largely because Emma Thompson labored to bring her screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, an early and somewhat formulaic novel, up to the standards set by Austen's later work, trimming and tightening and giving a better focus to the narrative. And there's something about the casual, good-natured approach to the novel by Lee and his cast that shows up Wright's film as a bit too slick and opulent and self-conscious. I can, and do, quibble with some of the casting: Hugh Grant's Edward Ferrars is a little too goofy and shy to have won the heart of a woman so intelligent as Thompson's Elinor Dashwood. And because Tom Rickman's usual screen persona is often a forbidding one, the film doesn't do enough to establish what Marianne eventually finds so attractive in him. But the whole thing is kept aloft by bright performances, a witty script that embroiders neatly on top of Austen's wit, and by the production design and costuming and especially Patrick Doyle's lovely score.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Joel Barish: Jim Carrey
Clementine Kruczynski: Kate Winslet
Patrick: Elijah Wood
Stan: Mark Ruffalo
Mary: Kirsten Dunst
Dr. Mierzwiak: Tom Wilkinson

Director: Michel Gondry
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth
Cinematography: Ellen Kuras
Production design: Dan Leigh
Film editing: Valdís Óskarsdóttir
Music: Jon Brion

I have a sneaky feeling that there's less to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind than meets the eye. That it is nothing more than a romantic drama tricked out with intricate storytelling devices like misleading cuts and deceptive flashbacks and an overlay of sci-fi. The story of the affair of two misfits, the morose Joel Barish and the eccentric Clementine Kruczynski, has been told before. How far, for example, are Joel and Clementine from C.C. Baxter and Fran Kubelik in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960)? The course of true love never did run smooth, but Eternal Sunshine doubles down on that premise, putting Joel and Clementine through the bumpy paces twice, leaving us to ponder if Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, et al. are telling us that their mismatched couple were meant to be together no matter what. Did Joel and Clementine split prematurely, rushing into the radical solution of erasing themselves from each other's memories, when instead if they had stuck it out they could have resolved their differences less drastically? No matter, because Eternal Sunshine is so efficiently and originally accomplished that we can overlook the conventional situation that is masked by so much cleverness. It is certainly the peak of Jim Carrey's boom-or-bust career, Kate Winslet demonstrates once again how invaluable she is as an actress, and the supporting cast is made up of top-caliber actors. I suspect that the film owes more to the fertile imagination of Charlie Kaufman, who won an Oscar for it (along with Gondry and Pierre Bismuth), and film editor Valdís Oskarsdóttir than to Gondry's direction -- he has yet to make another film as impressive as this one.

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