'Broken English' speaks of love in nuances

The Baltimore Sun

Writer-director Zoe Cassavetes, the daughter of Gena Rowlands and the late actor-director John Cassavetes, has made a distinctive romantic comedy-drama called Broken English. If it lasts a month at the Charles, fans of the theater's film noir series should plan to make it a double-bill with In a Lonely Place (playing Aug. 18, 20 and 23), the 1950 romantic mystery that Cassavetes' heroine, Nora (Parker Posey), sees with a date at a Manhattan revival house. In that cult classic, Bogey plays a tormented, possibly homicidal screenwriter who tells the woman who's just fallen in love with him, "A good love scene should be about something else besides love. For instance, this one. Me fixing grapefruit. You sitting over there, dopey, half-asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we're in love."

In Broken English, Zoe Cassavetes has learned Bogey's lesson: She treats cliches as fodder for comedy and nuances as the mainstays of a deeper, more beguiling sexual humor. What's engaging about this movie is that all the conventional trysts become low-key nightmare farces, including the scene when the heroine and a blind date go to In a Lonely Place. And the most genuine amorous sequence involves Nora's waking up from a half-drunken sleep to a sympatico Frenchman named Julien (Melvil Poupaud) - a man she met at a party the night before; a man she didn't remember staying over at her place - sipping coffee from her own kitchen and gently offering to brew her some. Before long, Nora is listing her phobias over brunch. The actors are so good at conveying Julien's gentle insistence that he means only the best for her - and Nora's grudging belief in his good faith - that anyone looking at them can tell they're in love.

Broken English (Magnolia Pictures) Starring Parker Posey, Drea de Matteo, Justin Theroux, Melvil Poupaud, Gena Rowlands. Rated PG-13. Time 97 minutes.

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