Dir. John Turturro, US, 2005, 115 mins
Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet
Review by Carol Allen
Director John Turturro describes this movie as a working class opera, which is a pretty accurate description. He uses a similar technique to the one pioneered in the UK by the late Dennis Potter of using popular song and dance to articulate the inner feelings of ordinary people and demonstrate their extraordinariness, sometimes with actors just miming and dancing to the songs, sometimes singing along with them.
The story's a pretty simple classic one – working class married man has affair with younger woman, his wife finds out and goes ballistic, he realises how much he needs her, ends the affair and comes back – but what makes it delightful is the original way it’s done. The numbers are imaginatively and wittily staged - Gandolfini and a street full of dancing dustmen and other artisans in “A Man Without Love”; Kate Winslet looking and moving like Rita Hayworth and surrounded by an adoring chorus of firemen; Christopher Walken with "Delilah"; and an intercutting ensemble sequence to Dusty Springfield's "Piece of My Heart". And like Potter's work, the songs are not just frilly bits for decoration but further the story by taking us into the characters' hopes and dreams. Winslet is brilliantly funny and touching as the down and dirty, warm-hearted, knicker-selling siren from the North of England. She has a sex scene with Gandolfini, where the inventive quality of her dirty talk is staggering. Sarandon’s a real firebrand as Kitty, the wife, and Gandolfini is terrific as Nick, her inarticulate working class husband with poetry and longing for love in his soul. The writing’s pretty good too, mixing some nice black humour with true passion. Near the beginning of the film, when Kitty's just found out he's having an affair, there's a scene of them having a row together, which is working class poetry.
As to the slightly odd title, the main theme is romance, disillusionment and the love that endures underneath. As to the cigarettes, that's a tricky one in these smokeist times. At the beginning of the film everyone smokes like chimneys and then seems to cut down dramatically! But we've all read those health warnings on the ciggie packets, which also brings me to the last act of the film. Once Nick has returned to Kitty, the film takes a tragic turn, which is somewhat at odds with the life affirming quality of the rest of the film. Despite the fact that Gandolfini and Sarandon handle the material very skilfully and movingly, writer/director Turturro seems to have lost his way and taken us into a different movie, which loses the “folk opera” production number aspect, apart from one simple little unaccompanied rendering of Irving Berlin's "The Girl that I Marry".
Discuss this film here
Icon Home Entertainment in association with Warner Home Video have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of Romance & Cigarettes for 17th July 2006.
Presented in 2.40:1 Anamorphic Widescreen with English DD5.1 Surround audio there are no announced extra features.
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