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Review: Romance and Cigarettes

Written by Angela Mac

Thursday, 17 September 2009 18:01

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Review: Romance and Cigarettes
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There is a passage in Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door in which the narrator compares the histories of two ex-girlfriends; one, who claimed to know suffering, and the other, who actually did. The former had been on the receiving end of a true catfight. Wound with fury, the cat ran up her body, teeth and talons shredding their way from her ankles to her hairline. While the latter had been out driving with her fiancé, when their car careened off the road. As the fiancé’s body was ejected from its seat, the windshield peeled the flesh from his carcass, leaving him to dangle, skinless, before her waking eyes.

Although Romance and Cigarettes is quite far removed from a blood and gore variety of film, the above passage comes to mind after viewing. Sometimes, we are certain we know the entirety of our lives. Whether pain or joy, we’re certain that we are experiencing the absolute height of that emotion. When something good happens, it is the best thing that could happen – and something bad, well, it is The Bad, that entity which inspired the dread deep in the pit of our stomach, the proverbial other shoe that time inevitably let fall.

It is fitting, then, that Romance and Cigarettes is a musical. A good musical can whisk you away, just as life’s emotions sometimes do. When Gene Kelly splashed in the puddles and swung around that lamp pole, he wasn’t showing us anything new. Rather, he was acting out what any of us – floating high above the doldrums of our existence after spending an evening with that perfect someone – would do, if only we had the coordination and grace to do it with. Humans could soar past Jupiter with happiness, if it weren’t for gravity’s constant vigilance. And rage? Rage, hurt and sorrow are hulking monsters within us, poised to blot out every detail beyond them as they burst into our brains.

Presenting those pieces of ourselves that sometimes come unleashed, is where the brilliance of Romance and Cigarettes lies. Passionate people aren’t necessarily scaling Mt Everest or pouring their heart into a microphone before a stadium of fans – they’re tucked in among us; ordinary people with souls awash in hope. Whether it is the starry-eyed teen ready to plant a flag upon her true love, or the grubby construction worker secretly yearning for a redheaded whore to happen pass and bask in the smoldering masculinity of his protruding gut, passion is very rarely right, and the finer details are nearly always dirty. Such ordinary-gone-awry vibes are just the sort of delicious fodder John Turturro has consistently delivered in his acting over the years – but Romance and Cigarettes proves that, for writer/director Mr. Turturro, it’s more than just an acting quirk, it’s a mindset.

He introduces us to Nick Murder: husband, father, construction worker, adulterer. That last mantle is the first of note – it raises him above being a secretly sleazy suburb-dweller to a place of distinction. In this instance, though, distinction is on par with inciting the fury of his wife, the scorn of his daughters… and the empathy of any sanitation engineer, police officer or construction worker with a penis who will listen. There’s a feeling during the opening scenes, as we watch James Gandolfini going to work, and Susan Sarandon tidying their marital home, that we all covet a bit of something more; for our lives to be bigger, meaningful, eventful. They say be careful what you wish for, and they’re right – eventful could easily translate into your wife coming across the Shel Silverstein-inspired perversion you jotted off for a brazen hussie named, “Tula”.

Whether losing her virtue in a transsexual alien’s love den, or driving off a cliff, Susan Sarandon has a remarkable knack for selling it. Given the DVD cover, the fact the film is billed as a musical, and that Turturro had both hands in the mix, the opening is heavy with anticipation of eccentricity about to fall into one’s lap. Yet… Gandolfini? The drab, cheap suburban home? It begins to feel like the quirk will surely be overwrought, and isn’t going to fly – especially when Sarandon’s romance-deprived housewife begins firing off on Gandolfini’s gruff husband. As she recites the poem she found, the end line is left ringing, glaringly: “Your vagina is WET.”

It’s funny, yes.

Imagining Nick Murder writing a poem is something like envisioning a monkey with a Crayola wedged between his toes, attempting the Mona Lisa.

But is it going to fly? For an hour and a half? How many wet vaginas before the boldness loses its luster?

Then – just as the doubt begins to form a head and body – Sarandon sells it. She opens her mouth, enraged. When Nick underestimates the extent of her hatred for him, she informs the man that she hates him with every part of herself, and begins to explain how she’ll locate more hate, so that she can hate him even more.

Pow! Bullseye! It was so…exactly… right. And again, and again, throughout the entire film.

Seriously, I don’t know how John Turturro has found any time to act over the years, when, clearly, he must have wiled away entire YEARS with the task of diligently filling up notebooks with a zillion tiny observations of the female mind. Though, maybe not females, in general. I can’t vouch for brunettes or blondes, but redheads? Yeah, I know -- for a fact -- that an angry redhead who is hell-bent on skewering her husband’s whore will truly believe that a one and a half inch, keychain variety pen-knife is more than large enough to do the deed. A pissed off redhead is the nuttiest broad you’ll find.