Shopgirl

So this is something I wrote a while ago, but since the page needs content, I might as well re-publish it.

Shopgirl is a long foul ball that goes over the fence. A few feet to the left, and it's a home run. But instead you're just down a strike in the count.

Claire Danes is good and it (and gorgeous) when she has something to do. But I felt like she was really poorly directed in this movie. She does a lot of standing around trying to emote, especially in the very slow first half. In this area, I think the LIT
comparision really does this film no favors: Scarlett Johanson is never working as hard to be still - yet - emotive as Danes does in this films first half hour. Later, given more to do, she's stronger.

I also think that the director (who's earlier movie I really liked) did a lousy job with the camera. Lots of medium shots, not a lot of expressivity. LIT is extremely (and effortlessly) poetic in comparison.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

And WTF with the ending voiceover? What are we doing in Steve Martin's head at the end of this film, rather than in hers? (It's not so much that it's his voice, mind you, it's that it's his perspective. This is her movie).

But fundamentally, the love triangle just didn't work for me here. How are we supposed to feel about Danes' and Martin's characters affair? We're told he's emotionally distant and withdrawn, but we never see or feel it. He makes mistakes, but he seems genuinely emotionally connected to her afterward, when trying to atone for it. What's the appeal of Schwartsman's character, and are we really supposed to believe that they're a proper couple at the end of the film?

A lot of that struck me as adaptation problems. I'm sure the novel makes these characters inner lives interesting, but nobody figured out how to externalize those inner lives into behavior. So instead of FEELING that Martin's character is emotionally
withdrawn, we're told it. And are we supposed to believe that the cure to all of Schartzman's character's problems was a few self-help books?

This kind of stuff is really hard to do well (and I can think of only a few movies which are really 100% successful at it) but ultimately this movie didn't work for me because I simply didn't feel any of the emotions of the characters. I want a movie to sweep me along, so I feel what the characters do, and yet here I was standing on the outside, watching.