Shopgirl: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

The new movie, "Shopgirl," isn't nearly as slight as it sounds. It isn't a comedy, it isn't a romantic comedy, it isn't a "chick-flick," and it certainly isn't about shopping.

Instead, it's about something far richer, more interesting and complex--a May-December romance between Mirabelle (Claire Danes), who works behind a glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles, and the boundaries she must learn to set if she's to continue her relationship with Ray Porter, a multi-millionaire businessman who made his fortune in the tech industry.

About Ray, there is every indication that he might best connect with a computer than with a living, breathing human being. The man thrums with irony. He's aloof yet somehow connected, kind yet self-involved. He has a gentle face and an easy spirit that belies a soul that would prefer that no one come too close.

Essentially, Ray is damaged goods holed up in a fabulous house and decked out in more Armani than, well, Armani. When he cruises Mirabelle at Saks and asks her to dinner in ways best left for you, none of it has a whiff of anything insidious because Ray isn't a creep. He's just a man with a wary heart, which he tries to explain to Mirabelle as clearly as he can before things go too far. He tells her that he isn't looking for anything longterm. He wants to stay in the moment, enjoy the moment, and then move onto the next moment, preferably with her. That last part would be especially nice for Ray, though he wants nothing more from Mirabelle.

Why complicate things?

With the terms presumably understood, they have their affair, and for a time, it's wonderful, particularly for this girl from the backwoods of Vermont, whose life heretofore was inhabited by some pretty lonely rooms upon her arrival in L.A.

Her first relationship in the movie, after all, isn't with Ray, but with Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a sketchy amp salesman cum font artist who meets Mirabelle one evening at a laundromat just when she's at her most vulnerable. Together, they have an awkward date that leads to awkward sex. In the long stretch of awkwardness that follows, Jeremy hits the road with a popular band and starts reading self-help books to lift himself to a higher level of evolution. That's good for Jeremy, but then along comes Ray, his private-plane bling, his good manners and his endearing touch.

And then comes trouble.

The movie, which director Anand Tucker ("The Girl with the Pearl Earing") based on Martin's script, itself based on his own novella, becomes a bit too neat as the threads of all its relationships do what you know they will do--they cross. Still, when they do, the very reserved, polished, well-bred "Shopgirl" doesn't make too much of a fuss about it. And maybe that's why it packs such a tough, sideways punch.

In "Shopgirl," we learn that life moves on, that love can and does beat within iron hearts, and that people come into and out of one's life for a reason. There's nothing new in that, but there is truth to it. It's how Danes, Martin and Schwartzman handle the familiarity of their situation that makes "Shopgirl" the fine movie that it is.

Grade: B+