Tagline: Relationships don’t always fit like a glove.
Based on Steve Martin’s best-selling novella, Shopgirl is a story of love in the modern age. Mirabelle (Claire Danes) works the glove counter at a high end department store in Beverly Hills, selling things that nobody buys anymore.
An artist struggling to keep up with even the minimum payment on her credit card and student loans, she lives a quiet life and keeps to herself until a rich, handsome fiftysomething named Ray Porter (Martin) sweeps her off her feet. Mirabelle revels in the attention, the sex, and especially, being in love, but somewhere, subconsciously, she realizes that the relationship cannot last.
Soon, she has to make a decision: will she stick with Ray, hoping that his feelings for her might grow, or does she take a chance with Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a musician who may offer more? “As Ray Porter watches Mirabelle walk away, he feels a loss. How is it possible, he wonders, to miss a woman who he kept at a distance, so that when she was gone, he would not miss her? Only then does he realize how in wanting part of her but not all of her, he had hurt them both, and he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.”
From one of today’s most beloved entertainers, Steve Martin, comes a very poignant and bittersweet look at modern relationships. SHOPGIRL follows the intertwined lives of three people searching for connection; but it is neither a conventional comedy nor a typical fairy-tale romance. Instead, it is a disarmingly tender exploration of love in the real world, of the confusion and miscommunication between men and women that throw a wrench in the works of so many contemporary love affairs. It is a story that raises provocative, conversation-sparking questions about the different things we want from love — and about how sometimes we settle for what we need.
Written by Martin (based on his novella) and directed by acclaimed British director Anand Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie”), SHOPGIRL begins as three disparate Los Angelenos’ paths unexpectedly collide. Sweet but as yet unspectacular Mirabelle, played by one of the leading ladies of her generation, Claire Danes (“The Hours”), works in the unfrequented glove department at Saks Fifth Avenue by day and toils alone at her unfulfilled dreams of being an artist by night. All she wants is to be loved. When she meets Jeremy, portrayed by indie star Jason Schwartzman (“Rushmore”), a hapless young font-maker of little ambition and zero means, she begins an awkward relationship with him. Then along comes Steve Martin’s Ray Porter — the older, wealthier, far more worldly charmer who sweeps Mirabelle completely off her feet.
Like a 21st century Jane Austen, Martin observes this unlikely trio as their completely different interpretations of who one another are and what their relationships mean lead to a tangle of misunderstandings and unexpected realizations. In the end, what happens to Mirabelle, Jeremy and Ray might not have been what any of them dreamed but, well, it was life.
Steve Martin writes, produces and stars in SHOPGIRL, based on his 2000 novella of the same name. The film is directed by Anand Tucker and produced by Ashok Amritraj and Jon Jashni for Hyde Park Entertainment, along with Martin. Andrew Sugerman serves as executive producer and Marcus A. Viscidi as co-producer. Bridgette Wilson-Sampras also stars in the film, along with Sam Bottoms, Frances Conroy and Rebecca Pidgeon.
In the year 2000, writer, actor, comic and entertainer Steve Martin made his debut as a novelist with a slim, even minimalist, 130-page-long story entitled Shopgirl. Although he had published several books of acclaimed essays previously, this deceptively simple tale was by far Martin’s most intimate and revealing work to date, exploring the funny choices and undoable mistakes people make in the universal human quest to find connection. The book was lauded by critics for its insightful look at the hopes, dreams — and especially the delusions — of men and women looking for love in the big city.
At the center of the story was an unusual heroine — the shopgirl herself, Mirabelle, a naïve young Vermonter set adrift in Los Angeles’ numbing world of isolation until she suddenly meets Ray Porter, a smart, highly successful, 50-something millionaire who becomes enchanted by her. Ray shows Mirabelle the affection for which she has so long yearned…then turns her life completely upside down as she realizes that they have completely misunderstood one another. What she saw as a fairy-tale dream, he saw as a temporary pleasure — and both of them, it seems, were wrong.
Shopgirl (2005)
Directed by: Anand Tucker
Starring: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Rebecca Pidgeon, Joshua Snyder, Frances Conroy, Samantha Shelton, Clyde Kusatsu
Screenplay by: Steve Martin
Production Design by: William Arnold
Cinematography by: Peter Suschitzky
Film Editing by: David Gamble
Costume Design by: Nancy Steiner
Set Decoration by: David Smith
Art Direction by: Sue Chan
Music by: Barrington Pheloung
MPAA Rating: R for some sexual content and brief language.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: October 21, 2005
Views: 88
