Shop Girl - B+

On DVD, Rated R, 105 minutes

Shop Girl is a small, devastating film dealing with the nature of relationships. It’s Steve Martin’s baby (he wrote the novella it’s based on and the screenplay as well as co-starring and co-producing), but Claire Danes as Mirabella owns the picture. Mirabella is a Vermont girl moved to L.A. to get out on her own and make it as an artist. Until the big break, she’s working at Saks selling high-end gloves to high-end patrons while living in a low-end apartment. Jason Schwartzman is Jeremy, a stencil artist (?) making ends meet selling amplifiers. Schwartzman, quickly becoming pigeon-holed as the go-to artists for complex roles that are not easily pigeon-holed, turns in a great performance here. Jeremy meets Mirabella at the laundry, and they share an awkward date and a more awkward one-night stand. Enter Steve Martin as Ray Porter a 50-year-old single bachelor with money and style who begins dating Mirabella. Ray is complex, caring and understanding but emotionally as cold and vacant as the modern house he indwells.

This film is difficult to categorize. It’s about love but is not really a romance. It’s comedic at moments, but not often enough to be a comedy. That really only leaves drama, but that’s not quite it either. It feels a little like Lost in Translation, another film that’s tough to group. Whatever it is, it’s beautifully filmed, with gorgeous scenes and its own interesting pacing. My only complaint is the voice-over by Martin (confusingly not as Ray Porter, but as a narrator only). While it is sparse, sometimes Martin says things that are obvious, tossing platitudes about that insult the audience. Still the ending rings true, and, if the narration is black-and-white, the characters aren’t.

This film probably isn’t for everyone and, I’ll admit, plays into my own special brand of neurosis. But for me it was an achingly beautiful surprise. B+