Romance and Cigarettes (2007)

Over the weekend I revisited Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz; primarily because I had just mentioned it in the Scheider piece and remembered that I hadn’t seen it in a LONG time. I wanted to ensure I wasn’t talking out of my ass, and I wasn’t, Scheider remains superb and the film, like Fosse’s Cabaret, manages a striking tone: dark and bubbly, almost giddy at first: in the mindset of the hero all the way, but with a gradual slide that reveals the hero’s perspective to be quite fallible, the giddiness stripped away to reveal a pitiful waste of life. I then popped in John Turturro’s long delayed Romance and Cigarettes, and found that I had accidentally planned an ideal double feature.

Someone said this, and I don’t know who, but we need to bring movies back a bit from the realm of the literal. David Lynch is certainly fighting the good fight, but we need more troops. There is a place for stripped down reality in films, of course, but we need to understand that there is more room for the fantastic too, and I don’t mean more horror and science-fiction (though good members of those genres are always welcome). I mean films that utilize the inherent benefits of the medium more, that explore the mindset of our heroes with less interest in what “actually happens” in favor of a greater interest in something more surreal and, ultimately, just as true. Most movies, even the acclaimed movies, aren’t anything like life anyway, so why let that hang-up fetter the imagination of our greatest filmmakers?

Turturro’s imagination certainly isn’t fettered in Romance and Cigarettes; this is a ballsy, swing for the back row picture. The film should be disjointed and absurd; insufferably self-absorbed and artificial, but it isn’t, and there’s one reason: Turturro has conviction in his film, there’s no last minute pull-out to appeal to less adventurous audience’s tastes, no apology, he follows his impulses to the very end.

The characters of Romance and Cigarettes don’t talk as people in real life; they talk as the dime store novelists of our dreams: overflowing with the kind of awkward, poetic obscenity that we wish could conjure at a second’s notice. Fantasies appear and disappear at whim, symbols are abundant and disarmingly obvious, and, best of all, popular songs are always available at the slightest provocation to vent the intangible disappointments that plague us. Turturro taps into the primal appeal of the musical that seems to elude many modern practitioners of the form: the release. Camera pyrotechnics are beside the point, it’s the emotions that should be blunt and in the foreground, everything else will follow.

I’m also happy to report that James Gandolfini has finally found a post-Tony Soprano part that suits his vicious Teddy Bear contradictions, that tweaks and refines his image in equal measure. Gandolfini hasn’t been this good in a movie since his brilliant bit in the best scene of True Romance, where he explains to a dizzy, battered Patricia Arquette the history of his induction into killing for money. It’s a chilling bit of work, but, like all the great movie sociopaths, Gandolfini remains undeniably appealing, or if not appealing, at least a little vulnerable, we’re ashamed of ourselves for (sort of) liking this guy.

Gandolfini plays Nick Murder (a wink at Tony?) a heavy, sad, ironic lothario whose infidelity is discovered by his wife, Kitty (Susan Sarandon, terrific) within minutes of the opening of the picture. The couple, still clearly very much in love, trade movie barbs with savage gusto, but it’s soon obvious that Nick isn’t going to be forgiven anytime soon. Nick isn’t even sure if he should be forgiven, being that he still hasn’t managed to quit his insatiable other woman, Tula (Kate Winslet). Nick and Kitty’s separate, desperate wanderings comprise the majority of what follows in Romance and Cigarettes: Kitty tries to find Tula to exact revenge; Nick tries to shake Tula and be the family man that he wishes he could be.

There’s a bit of macho idealization going on here, with two attractive women battling it out over a man who wouldn’t look out of place under a bridge, but the sheer force of the piece holds it together. Romance and Cigarettes isn’t a thinly veiled appeal for the right to screw around, it’s tender and melancholy, a pop art collage of surprising weight. By the end, the cost of Nick’s self-absorption has undeniably been acknowledged, particularly in his final encounter with Tula by the water.

Tula has been, up until this moment, one of Winslet’s gaudiest and most outsized creations, a coarse burlesque of a wife’s worst nightmare of the “other woman.” Winslet’s work is striking throughout, but it doesn’t become one of her best until this final scene. Nick finally ends it with Tula, and she gasps and falls into the water: singing as she sinks. The image of this fallen young women is beautiful and haunting, like something out of a good silent film that Tim Burton never got to make, and as “truthful” as any hundred more subtle scenes.

Some of you are going to watch Romance and Cigarettes, or have watched it, and think me absolutely nuts. It’s that kind of picture: squirrelly, impossible to pin down, and infuriating for those who don’t want to play along. Normally this would be my spot to rant about how unjust it is that such a good movie sat around for so long, but, in this case, I’m not surprised. It’s too bad though, because we need more movies this messy, this human, this willing to be patched and imperfect. These kinds of pictures can be awful, but, at their best, they can also be the kinds of pictures you think about when you shave in the morning. Watch Romance and Cigarettes, All That Jazz, and The Fountain close together over a weekend, and see if that following Monday isn’t just a bit different from the Monday before it.

★★★½

Posted on February 19th, 2008 in 2007, Reviews, Musical |

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