Romance & Cigarettes

At this point, John Turturro’s long delayed indie musical Romance & Cigarettes is better known for its dilemmas than its content. Filmed in 2005 for a reported budget of $11 million and featuring and A-list cast, Turturro’s third outing as a director was poised to be his biggest film yet. Then some negative press emerged, Sony and United Artists got themselves caught up in a dispute over who had distribution rights following a messy consolidation, and suddenly the film fell off the radar. Now the movie is resurfacing in a very limited release at the hands of no studio at all, but through the will of Turturro alone who managed to acquire the rights for himself. Instead of being permanently shelved, it will now have a brief theatrical life. The news is good for those involved, who seem indisputably passionate about this experimental project, but perhaps not for audiences who may or may not take to its off the wall style and boldly outrageous musical numbers.

Near to the very start of Turturro’s hit-or-miss foul-mouthed musical comedy, Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) walks out of his house after splitting with his furious wife (Susan Sarandon) and begins to sing Englebert Humperdinck’s “A Man Without Love.” Not only does Gandolfini sing it. Soon the street cleaners and gardeners are singing and dancing behind him. The whole neighborhood bursts into ridiculous, nearly comical, pop music rapture. At that point, you’re either with this movie or you’ve called it quits. And even if you’re willing to stick with it and embrace the gimmicky nonsense Turturro has devised, it’d be hard to really love this film from start to finish. The musical numbers have a sort of clever, cheeky goodness to them. They’re winkingly outrageous and yet surprisingly efficient at encapsulating emotional expressions made by each character and linking together narrative threads from the many subplots at work. The real bummer here is that the film isn’t all one big down and dirty song and dance show. It’s also a turgid melodrama about a crumbling marriage and the ugliness of love. The dramatic material sinks the characters like stones, repeating the same tired arguments and turning them all into blubbering fools alternating between being lovesick and sick of love.

It’s a unique cinematic vision, sporadically entertaining, and certainly never dull. Unfortunately, it’s also a sometimes unwatchable mess of film with wild, uneven pacing. It’s a concept so out there, that each scene is a new risk and only half or so of them really pay off. The biggest triumphs come from those starring Kate Winslet as Tula, Nick’s fiery red-headed mistress. Whether she’s singing along with wild glee to Connie Francis’ performance of “Scapricciatiello” or mouthing to the devastating wail of Ute Lemper’s version of Nick Cave’s “Little Water Song” (staged dramatically and quite literally as a an under water warble) she’s a force of nature in the somewhat underwritten part. All those who marveled at her unexpected edge in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will be further stunned by her unabashed passion and filthy mouth here as Tula. It’s a real accomplishment for her as an actress to transcend the film’s lunacy and make us root for someone the film all but rules out as a sly and evil temptress. The greatest shame is that Tula, like most of the film’s characters, gets no great resolution. The last 20 minutes or so of this project are disgustingly sentimental and entirely unenjoyable, leading to a shamefully half-hearted reconciliation of sorts between Nick and his wife that’s motivated by tragedy and never really earned.

Grade: C+