Shopgirl – Movie Review

The first thing you have to ask yourself is, “Do I want to hurt now, or do I want to hurt later.” That Shopgirl is a film which poses such a question is rather uninteresting really, but the fact that it poses the question while only sideways implying that the question applies to every relationship is an impressive textual delivery.

Shopgirl, much like Lost in Translation, is the story of a May-December romance which ends with the young, but somehow more real for the experience, woman parting company with the wealthy, worldly-wise, but incomplete for all that older man. If you think mentioning this spoils the film for you, there is no point in your watching it anyway.

Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is a young woman from Vermont who has come to L.A. to do whatever it is people come to L.A. from Vermont to do. Unfortunately, we who know better than Mirabelle realize that in the main people come from Vermont to L.A. to squeeze themselves into a tedious and useless existence standing behind a counter at Saks and trudging up and down the stairs to their shoebox apartment.

She is, however, a fairly clever girl, who says things like, “I’m from Vermont,” and not only relays an explanation as to her inability to act unscrupulously, but is also pretty clear about all the work such a statement can manage when directed at L.A. natives. She is also an artist, but despite the fact that her art basically entails monkeying with photographs of herself, she removes herself from the L.A. standard yet again by avoiding Photoshop®. Though she might achieve the same effect, Mirabelle prefers the perhaps meaningless tedium of applying honest-to-god charcoal for hours on end.

Ray Porter (Steve Martin) is a wealthy businessman who walks into Mirabelle’s life seemingly out of the blue. He buys some expensive gloves from her at Saks, only to deliver them to her apartment with an invitation to dinner. The two go out, and though Mirabelle is properly suspicious, the narrator tells us the one thing she can’t bring herself to ask, but desperately needs to know is, “Why me?”

It’s a good question, and one that takes a bit longer than the film’s running time to answer. Ray may be uncomfortable on Mirabelle’s thrift store furniture, and he may tease her playfully about her wine naivety; but he knows good grapes when sees them. Mirabelle is attractive, but not in the same way as the girl at the cosmetics counter who will attempt to go after Ray later in our adventures. No, she’s not L.A. attractive; she’s Vermont attractive. She’s real. And, Ray knows she’ll make a fine wine someday.

Thrown into this mix of well-drawn, fully-formed characters, is Jeremy Kraft (Jason Schwartzman), and he is not real at all. Not because there aren’t any people out there just like him, but because they aren’t real either. Jeremy and Mirabelle also date, beginning just prior to Ray’s entrance, but they don’t exactly hit it off at first. Jeremy is the sort of guy who doesn’t understand women, or for that matter people, to an extent virtually unprecedented outside the walls of a frat house.

He is in love with Mirabelle, not in the sense of an emotion he can make sense of, because he hasn’t quite made sense of waking up in this weird place with all the lights and noise yet; but in the sense of rather a stupid dog who has encountered the two-legged creature that can magically make food appear. To his credit, he is mostly harmless, and is willing to listen to relationship books on tape. He will even follow their advice and say things like, “I think I may have objectified you instead of treating you like the unique and beautiful person you are,” though he clearly isn’t absolutely sure what it means or what he is meant to accomplish by saying it.

Hilarity ensues. Well…, mildly amusing peaks and valleys of excitement and ennui ensue, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. And, as many of us who have spun around this mortal coil for a while realize, that’s really the point – sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

If at the end of Lost in Translation, you felt bad for anybody, you wildly misunderstood the thing. Frankly, with that kind of misunderstanding, it is hard to avoid feeling badly for you. As I said in my review of that film, some events are entire lives in themselves. I’d like to paraphrase myself now and say, there are moments in life that are worth entire lives. At the end of that movie, the girl smiles.

If at the end of Shopgirl, you do not feel bad for everyone, you wildly misunderstand the thing. Ray is certainly not up for Man of the Year, but he is a victim of himself. Worse, he knows his loss. There is nothing deceptive about his telling Mirabelle at exit that he did love her. No one could lie that well. There are entire lives in life that are not worth moments.

Mirabelle has a freshly polished Jeremy who certainly loves her, and as the narrator pointedly insists at us, it is a pure and tender love. And, Mirabelle smiles at the end as well. But, hers is a very different sort of smile… filled with questions… filled with uncertainty. She knows that she has been Jeremy. She has been the one who would change for another. The one who felt moved to become “better.” The one who asked, “Why don’t you love me?”

Her smile wonders if she has really moved on to a place where two people are being Jeremy at each other. That ultimate goal. Her smile has doubts. She hugs Jeremy a little too convincingly.

Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

But,

I don’t know if I want to hurt now or later.

Rating:  

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