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ROMANCE & CIGARETTES
Written & Directed by: John Turturro.
Produced by: John Penotti & John Turturro.
Director of Photography: Tom Stern.
Edited by: Ray Hubley.
Music by: Bill Maxwell.
Released by: Boroturro Inc.
Country of Origin: USA. 115 min. Rated R.
With: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Barbara Sukowa, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard & Amy Sedaris.

With bows to Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You and Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart, writer/director John Turturro uses pop songs and dance to express his blue-collar characters’ feelings and fantasies. But he only occasionally comes close to Dennis Potter’s mastery of the visual mix tape to effectively tell a story.

Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) works fixing bridges, and bridges loom large over his Queens home, as Turturro shot in his native New York City borough. But Nick’s home life is harder to mend. His long suffering seamstress wife, Kitty (Susan Sarandon), is finally fed up with his affairs, particularly his current obsession for trash talking Tula. (Kate Winslet demolishes her English Rose image as the barely recognizable sexy Cockney mistress whose flaming tresses inspire one of the film's best music and dance montages, set to Bruce Springsteen’s raunchiest song, “Red Headed Woman.”) Nick even gets circumcised to please her. The Murder family’s escalating “Marriage is combat!” fights can barely be heard, though, over the racket of their daughters’ rock band, improbably played by Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, and Aida Turturro.

Characters spontaneously rap, converse in lyrics, frequently from Broadway musicals, and rhapsodize poetry, mainly from the works of Charles Bukowski. But their thoughts and dreams are mostly manifested through pop music, whether the actors lip synch, perform singing-in-the-shower mode, along to recordings or dubbed. Nick favors the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck and Connie Francis, while Kitty expresses herself through classic rock, particularly versions of Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.”

In one literal interpretation, the Moonglows’ doo-wop classic “Ten Commandments of Love” is sung with a gospel choir in a church where Eddie Izzard is the priest. Choreographer Margie Gillis stages a nightmare Biblical reenactment to Tom Jones’s “Delilah” in a rollicking number, and some songs have delightful Elvis-inspired choreography by Tricia Brouk, with dancing neighbors, cops, garbage men and firefighters with phallic hoses. Other musical dreams are enlivened by Turturro’s encircling camera work and rhythmic edits between characters and places.

Bringing humanity to their roles regardless of the overly-frenetic storytelling, Gandolfini and Sarandon anchor the film. Former Queens chorus boy Christopher Walken, as the rockabilly Cousin Bo, is as delightful here as in Hairspray, with the same effortless panache he displayed in the Spike Jonze-directed music video “Weapon of Choice.” Steve Buscemi is his usual comic crank as Nick’s best friend with clueless advice about women. Though Elaine Stritch doesn’t sing, she makes a forceful appearance as Nick’s mother, condemning the Murder men as “three generations of whore masters.”

But Turturro may be the first director to elicit one-note, broad campy performances from Bobby Cannavale, as the preening wannabe pop star neighbor Fryburg, and Parker, as the preening wannabe riot grrl daughter Constance. Amy Sedaris as the obnoxious next door neighbor Frances is even worse, but is only seen briefly.

A victim of various corporate mergers and resulting legal limbos since its 2005 production, Romance & Cigarettes is only now getting released in the U.S. since Turturro wrestled back the distribution rights. Even as Chicago has pointed towards a revival in movie musicals, two films, Once and Colma, have just demonstrated that it is possible to even make consistently charming low-budget, working-class musicals by creatively using original music and talented singers in a more integrated and compelling story than Turturro pulls off here. Nora Lee Mandel
September 10, 2007