Romance & Cigarettes
Directed by John Turturro
Starring James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Mandy Moore, and Steve Buscemi
Rated R

Romance & Cigarettes boasts a cast that anyone in their right mind would drool over. James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Mandy Moore, Aida Turturro, Mary-Louise Parker, Christopher Walken, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard, Bobby Cannavale, and Elaine Stritch. I would pay to see any one of these fine actors just read out of the phone book.

In fact, let’s see if we can’t make that happen, huh? All eleven of them taking turns reading the East Orange, New Jersey White Pages? Because Romance & Cigarettes just doesn’t work. It’s a sprawling mess that gets labeled with the term “personal” because the only person who gets what the hell the film was trying to accomplish is probably writer-director John Turturro. It’s a bizarre hybridization of Moulin Rouge and Moonstruck, and every bit as loud and unsubtle as either of them. This is the kind of movie that, were the director ever to deign to come to our humble little site and read this negative review of mine, he would probably think to himself “Bah! He just doesn’t understand my ARTISTRY!”

And he’d be right. I don’t. I think I understand where he was going, but I’m just not sure how he thought it was going to work. From all outward appearances, it seems that Turturro has morphed into Barton Fink. HE CREATES FOR A LIVING!

Gandolfini plays Nick Murder, a middle-class steel worker who cheats on his wife Kitty (Sarandon) with English firebrand Tula (Winslet). This earns the ire of his three daughters (Moore, Aida Turturro, Parker) and the envy of his best friend (Buscemi). There’s a lot of screaming, four-letter words, and singing.

Yes, singing. After his first big row with his wife, he heads out into the street and sings along with Engelbert Humperdink’s “A Man Without Love,” as neighbors and trashmen break out into choreographed dancing. And yes, he sings along. The original song is present, as is the vocal track from the actor. Whether this is an artistic choice, or a ploy to cover up the fact that some of these actors can’t carry a tune in a bucket is unknown to me.

Some of these numbers do work. There’s one where Christopher Walken stabs his wife to the tune of Tom Jones’ “Delilah” that I could watch on a loop all day. There’s also one where Sarandon sings along to Big Brother and the Holding Company that I like a great deal. But there are a few, like Moore doing “I Want Candy” and Bobby Cannavale’s weird-as-all-hell next door neighbor undulating along with James Brown’s “Hot Pants” that I could have done without.

This is better in theory than it is in practice. I know that there’s a movie in how our lives are connected through perspective in pop culture, but Romance & Cigarettes isn’t it.

All the acting and story portions are are about as subtle as an exploding chemical plant. Everyone is swinging for the fences with this one, with screaming and overacting abound. Most embarrassing is the Gandolfini/Winslet sex scene, which is screeching combined with the faces that rednecks make to the monkeys at the zoo to try and get them closer. I can understand why all these actors are drawn to an actor-written script like this one. Working on movies is difficult and constraining, trying to adhere to story and theme and plot and character and all that other stuff that’s boring for an actor. Sometimes, like dogs, they need to be let outside to play. At the very least, Romance & Cigarettes provided an environment in which they could throw caution to the wind.

Of course, this is a “Caution to the Wind” kind of movie and on that level, I at least respect it a great deal. It’s all chutzpah and precious little brains.

** out of 4

www.romanceandcigarettesfilm.com