Shopgirl

Shopgirl was one of those “life lessons” kind of movies, where everyone makes mistakes and messes up each other’s lives, but really learn and grow by the end of the film.

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) moves to Los Angeles from Vermont in order to pursue, not an acting or musical career (thank god), but a career as an artist—as in painting stuff artist. In between paintings she works at Saks Fifth Avenue to pay her bills, one of which includes a student loan with a fabulous payoff of 70 some years. Apparently she has not made any friends whatsoever, so when a strange, scruffy dude named Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) ineptly hits on her at the laundromat, she is desperate enough for companionship that she agrees to a date with him. Jeremy works for a musical appliance store, and it’s not clear what his basic ambition is, other than to be extremely odd and scruffy. He seems harmless enough though, and since Mirabelle is extremely lonely she sleeps with him. A few days later she meets Ray Porter (Steve Martin), an older guy whose idea of wooing a woman is expensive gifts and nice dinners, with the added bonus that he showers regularly. Mirabelle is conveniently saved from having to completely destroy Jeremy and turn him down, however, as he calls to let her know he is leaving town for a 6-month road trip with a local band. Now free to date Ray without a guilty conscience, she begins seeing him exclusively despite his early warning to her that he is not looking for anything serious with her.

After several months with Ray it becomes clear to Mirabelle that while he can provide her with everything she could want, he perpetually keeps her at a distance and will never fully commit to the relationship. Meanwhile, Jeremy starts calling Mirabelle from the road, and she realizes that despite his hygienic shortcomings and lack of maturity, he is completely devoted to her and willing to give her the emotional attachment she is missing with Ray. The plot finally reaches its climax, and Mirabelle has to make a decision about which man she will choose, despite the fact that it was pretty obvious whom she would pick from the beginning.

Shopgirl is about love and loss, and how people make compromises with themselves in an attempt to make a connection with someone else. In other words, it’s the kind of movie you’ll see on Lifetime. There were admittedly some funny parts to the movie, mostly during the scenes in which Jeremy acts like a loonball, and those were certainly fun to watch if nothing else. Steve Martin narrates parts of the movie even though he is not the central character, which I thought was somewhat distracting. His narration is told from an outside third party perspective, rather than directly from his character, so I kept wondering who was the actual storyteller in this movie. The screenplay itself was adapted from the “novella” by Martin, so I suppose he just read passages directly from the book, which left me feeling as though Steve Martin was reading me a bedtime story or something. It was really quite odd.

This is definitely a sentimental and emotional film, and one that, for the most part, is fairly realistic about relationships. It’s a decent flick, perhaps a bit slow at times, but I’m sure many people who are into that emotional stuff will love Shopgirl. Me, I just want some explosions and gunfights, so I hope that’s the topic of Martin’s next “novella.”