Broken English
Studio: HDNet Films
Rated: PG-13
Cast: Parker Posey, Gena Rowlands
Director: Zoe Cassavetes
WorkNameSort: Broken English
Our Rating: 2.50
Broken English is the latest vehicle built for Parker Posey to look radiant and feel grim, but it’s her recent Hal Hartley collaboration (Fay Grim) that should win her honors, not this unlucky-in-love catch-all drama. She wanders through the episodic narrative, a beautiful and vulnerable flower doing her best to etch distinction into a screenplay that would rather rely on familiar retreads, shambling as it does from one contrivance to another with a sloth-like propulsion. With all the coincidences forced into the narrative ‘ lovers conveniently bumping into each other, old friends appearing and disappearing to score shallow plot points ‘ you get the feeling that the odds of finding someone you know in New York and Paris lean more toward strolling through small-town familiarity than suffering through needle-in-a-haystack frustration. That, or it’s just a crutch relied on too many times by a filmmaker unable to better tie in the movie’s loose ends.
Not that said director is under much pressure, of course; like her kin Nick and Xan, Zoe Cassavetes is only walking in the footsteps of the one of the greatest filmmakers in history. There’s a lot of promise in this feature debut, but it’s buried beneath an unfortunate tendency to conform.
Posey plays Nora Wilder, a high-ranking executive at a posh Manhattan hotel, the preferred destination for celebrities staying in the area. She has a well-paying job, a nice apartment, a college degree, an interest in the arts ‘ and she’s Parker freaking Posey ‘ so the pity-me tone instilled in her inability to find a nice guy doesn’t really work. That said, there are probably lots of 30-somethings in the Big Apple who relate, and the movie works best when channeling the panic and uncomfortability of the dating scene. Nora tries to connect with a sleazy actor sporting a Travis Bickle mohawk (Justin Theroux); he’s a blind date set up by mutual mothers who turns out to still be obsessed with a recent ex- (Josh Hamilton) and a smooth-talking Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud). Through each of these encounters, her emotional well-being comes apart more and more.
It’s a fairly engaging character study until the story shifts to Paris, and the potentially meaningful becomes the maddeningly predictable. Cassavetes shoots the City of Love through rose-colored lenses, and while the contrast between the constrictive banality of her New York and the glossy congeniality of her Paris is deliberate and interesting, it doesn’t make up for the film’s third-act crumble. Ultimately, the only wisdom you leave with is the implausibly wise pocket philosophy gleaned from romantic strangers on the streets of an idealized France.
This article appears in Aug 8-14, 2007.