Let's be honest, there wasn't much romance in Romance & Cigarettes, was there? There wasn't really much of anything, bar a couple of dopey and un-enjoyable characters moping around about how 'down' they are or how regretful they are or how lonely they are or how they cannot communicate with anyone and how everything is horrible and terrible and life's nasty and it's all spiralling out of control. Fact of the matter is, the film is an hour and a half plus of big name actors and actresses dallying around feeling sorry for themselves beneath a facade of a study of love when really it's a daft exercise in how post-modern we can be with camera angles and musical numbers as we pretend to make a study of the complexity of relationships.
I really disliked Romance & Cigarettes; I disliked every eccentric, style-driven, often cringe-inducing minute of it for a number of reasons. The film was made by a man called John Turturro, who I've seen in a number of very good films and who has worked with a couple of America's more exciting contemporary directors; names such as Martin Scorsese, Joel and Ethen Coen as well as Spike Lee. Trouble is, Turtutto is just an actor and, with only two prior directorial efforts credited to his name according to this site, it is advised he stick to acting in those small-but-very-noticeable roles in films that go on and garner much deserved attention. Clockers, Jungle Fever, Rounders and The Colour of Money spring to mind and it's quite feasible there are others out there I'm yet to stumble upon.
The film masquerades as a cheery and colourful study on life, love and the tribulations that these things entail when the fact you've been stupid enough to cheat on your partner catches up with you. But this film, like its makers probably would as well, tells us that its lead character's fling with another woman was some kind of 'natural drive' or some kind of "spiritual calling that drove the male onto another spiritual level that forced him into confronting his fears and desires and thus.......blah, blah, blah" You know what? Rubbish John Turturro, absolute rubbish – you're a good actor at playing those snotty and wormy characters you often get in crime driven films (Miller's Crossing stands out in memory) but your style as a director completely masks the fact you're making a film about idiots, making idiotic and ill advised decisions under a pretense of something deeper.
So if the director's out of his element then the cast additionally follow suit with a string of musical numbers done really badly that might completely miss the target in the sense people will find the bad singing and eccentricity of the pieces 'funny' more so than they will find what it is they're actually singing about quite humbling; which is what they should be feeling given the themes of loss of love and despair held within the songs. But the film itself is built around James Gandolfini's character named Nick Murder and his life which is balanced around working as some sort of maintainer of bridges with his buddy Angelo (Buscemi); his life at home with wife Kitty (Sarandon) and their three daughters while lastly, an elusive affair with Tula, in what is an image shredding role for Kate Winslet, given her prior work.
I mean, the film is rubbish. It masquerades as this post-modern and energetic look at love and the dilemmas when you feel for two people and the moral choices that accompany it. No it's not; it's about a bored, working class American slob who's just not getting enough action, isn't satisfied enough and plays around a bit on the side for his own amusement. Very early on, there's a musical number that would-be about loneliness and general confusion as the morality of the situation looks to sink in but all the women wear pretty, quaint revealing costumes and we get certain close ups of certain areas the women possess and you begin to have this sick, dirty realisation that this is what everyone's more interested in. I mean, essays and books have been written about how cinema is constructed for and around a male perspective but this just sticks two fingers up at all of that and says "So what!? We're going through with it anyway!"
Twinned with this is an annoying little subplot about equally annoying people, those being Nick and Kitty's three daughters Constance (Parker); Rosebud (Turturro) and Baby (Moore); whose full name is rather disturbingly 'Baby Murder', and their band that they try to get going which is flagging as each day goes by what with their horrid, annoying guitar and piano playing and singing – I know it's done badly on purpose but who on Earth thought it might be funny? Who actually finds it amusing? I read afterwards that the 'Moore' that plays Baby is a certain Mandy Moore, a singer and good God – why, oh why would you accept a role in a film in which you play a really bad musician if you're a musician yourself – perhaps she hadn't been selling many records, maybe the cash situation was low.
So in short; it's a disaster – Angelo plays the Jiminy Cricket/conscience role that pops up and offers Nick tidbits of advice whenever the film feels he needs it, which is a bit silly. There's a little plot twist later on that leads the film off down another route towards supposed redemption (which is what the makers would tell you it's about) but it's very silly and bails the film out in terms on needing resolution. All in all, rather a large and silly mess made by someone who has worked with, arguably, the best but is far from those persons' respective level.
I really disliked Romance & Cigarettes; I disliked every eccentric, style-driven, often cringe-inducing minute of it for a number of reasons. The film was made by a man called John Turturro, who I've seen in a number of very good films and who has worked with a couple of America's more exciting contemporary directors; names such as Martin Scorsese, Joel and Ethen Coen as well as Spike Lee. Trouble is, Turtutto is just an actor and, with only two prior directorial efforts credited to his name according to this site, it is advised he stick to acting in those small-but-very-noticeable roles in films that go on and garner much deserved attention. Clockers, Jungle Fever, Rounders and The Colour of Money spring to mind and it's quite feasible there are others out there I'm yet to stumble upon.
The film masquerades as a cheery and colourful study on life, love and the tribulations that these things entail when the fact you've been stupid enough to cheat on your partner catches up with you. But this film, like its makers probably would as well, tells us that its lead character's fling with another woman was some kind of 'natural drive' or some kind of "spiritual calling that drove the male onto another spiritual level that forced him into confronting his fears and desires and thus.......blah, blah, blah" You know what? Rubbish John Turturro, absolute rubbish – you're a good actor at playing those snotty and wormy characters you often get in crime driven films (Miller's Crossing stands out in memory) but your style as a director completely masks the fact you're making a film about idiots, making idiotic and ill advised decisions under a pretense of something deeper.
So if the director's out of his element then the cast additionally follow suit with a string of musical numbers done really badly that might completely miss the target in the sense people will find the bad singing and eccentricity of the pieces 'funny' more so than they will find what it is they're actually singing about quite humbling; which is what they should be feeling given the themes of loss of love and despair held within the songs. But the film itself is built around James Gandolfini's character named Nick Murder and his life which is balanced around working as some sort of maintainer of bridges with his buddy Angelo (Buscemi); his life at home with wife Kitty (Sarandon) and their three daughters while lastly, an elusive affair with Tula, in what is an image shredding role for Kate Winslet, given her prior work.
I mean, the film is rubbish. It masquerades as this post-modern and energetic look at love and the dilemmas when you feel for two people and the moral choices that accompany it. No it's not; it's about a bored, working class American slob who's just not getting enough action, isn't satisfied enough and plays around a bit on the side for his own amusement. Very early on, there's a musical number that would-be about loneliness and general confusion as the morality of the situation looks to sink in but all the women wear pretty, quaint revealing costumes and we get certain close ups of certain areas the women possess and you begin to have this sick, dirty realisation that this is what everyone's more interested in. I mean, essays and books have been written about how cinema is constructed for and around a male perspective but this just sticks two fingers up at all of that and says "So what!? We're going through with it anyway!"
Twinned with this is an annoying little subplot about equally annoying people, those being Nick and Kitty's three daughters Constance (Parker); Rosebud (Turturro) and Baby (Moore); whose full name is rather disturbingly 'Baby Murder', and their band that they try to get going which is flagging as each day goes by what with their horrid, annoying guitar and piano playing and singing – I know it's done badly on purpose but who on Earth thought it might be funny? Who actually finds it amusing? I read afterwards that the 'Moore' that plays Baby is a certain Mandy Moore, a singer and good God – why, oh why would you accept a role in a film in which you play a really bad musician if you're a musician yourself – perhaps she hadn't been selling many records, maybe the cash situation was low.
So in short; it's a disaster – Angelo plays the Jiminy Cricket/conscience role that pops up and offers Nick tidbits of advice whenever the film feels he needs it, which is a bit silly. There's a little plot twist later on that leads the film off down another route towards supposed redemption (which is what the makers would tell you it's about) but it's very silly and bails the film out in terms on needing resolution. All in all, rather a large and silly mess made by someone who has worked with, arguably, the best but is far from those persons' respective level.