Romance & Cigarettes is a different kind of musical and by “different” I mean “better” and by musical I mean…I don’t even know what I mean. This is not a pure musical, that’s part of the charm. For some reason, all of the things I can’t stand in a regular musical I actually enjoy in this film. Why is that? What makes it so much better? Maybe it’s the music. Like Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes uses pop songs instead of some of the atrocious noise and idiotic lyrics that often clutter Broadway and its environs. (I’m talking to you Lord Webber.) And, since it’s not all songs by the same artist there’s a lot more variety than you would get if the entire soundtrack was drawn from, say, The Spin Doctors’ Pocket Full of Kryptonite. Nobody dislikes hearing Dusty Springfield singing “Piece of My Heart.” Nobody. Don’t even try. But then again, when was the last time you enjoyed kicking back and listening to some Engelbert Humperdinck? For me, it was when I was watching this film. I’m not knocking Engelbert Humperdinck (okay, maybe a little) but seriously, it took me until the credits to realize what I had just listened to—and enjoyed. Engelbert Humperdinck—who would have guessed?
Mr. Turturro’s little movie is full of surprises like that. You know you’re in for a quirky film from the first line of the film when Kate Winslet’s Tula says, “When a woman bends over a man sees a jelly donut. Her brain expands, his explodes…dead on arrival in her powdered jelly donut.” Yeah, how many musicals start out like that? What does that even mean? Well, I know what it means…but why say that? And of course, how many musicals have Eddie Izzard and Christopher Walken? Did I mention Mary-Louise Parker and Amy Sedaris?
The biggest surprise is that this is not a schmaltzy saccharine musical about love. Amor does not vincit the omnia here, if you’ll excuse the horrific Latin grammar. It’s a lot more complex than that.
Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) is cheating on his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon) with the foul-mouthed fiery red-head Tula (Kate Winslet). Cue the domestic disturbance and more singing. Nick talks over his troubles with his coworker Angelo (Steve Buscemi) who is always quick with the grand and hilarious truisms as any best friend should be.
“I’d like to fuck a woman with a backside as big as the world,” Angelo says, and “I’d like to fuck a woman tennis player—with the outfit on, a tennis ball stuck in her panties…” and you have to think yourself: Maybe I’d like to fuck a woman tennis player, too. Maybe I want to fuck a woman with a backside as big as the world. Maybe I’d like to fuck a woman who looks like Cary Grant in drag. Okay, maybe not that last bit, but still. No one in Phantom of the Opera mentions fucking a woman tennis player or a jelly donut and it’s a poorer work of art for it.
So, Nick gets circumcised to please Tula who rewards him by eating fried chicken in bed with him—after the sex, of course. This is the part that shows that John Turturro has his finger on the pulse of American fantasies. You see, it’s not just about the wild heart-attack inducing sex with a dirty hot redhead who works in a lingerie shop. No, that’s a pedestrian fantasy. It’s really about the post-coital fried chicken. Now that’s true dirty lust.
Love, meanwhile, is a stranger thing. You have young love, like Baby Murder (Mandy Moore) and Fryburg (Bobby Cannavale) whose ridiculous make-out session is punctuated by the following exchange:
Baby: You’re the best kisser in the world.
Fryburg: I wanna make out with your whole family.
And they go on making out. Really. That last little statement wasn’t a deal-breaker?
Maybe I really don’t know anything about love. Maybe no one knows anything about love. And maybe that’s the point of the film. It’s about how complicated love is, and how lust complicates things. It’s about how a first love can go awry and screw up your life like Cousin Bo (Christopher Walken) whose first love Ro (Cady Huffman) haunts and taunts him. “Ro was my first love. I traced her name in cowshit.” Tracing her name in cowshit--I wish I had thought of that with my first love.
The plot really isn’t the thing here. Even the characters, delightful as they are, aren’t the point of the exercise. This is a meditation about love, and what it really gets you. Also, it’s about how smoking your brains out will get you black lungs and your mother, in this case Elaine Stritch, will show up to call you a whoremaster before you die. Life is grand, isn’t it? Smoke up.
The film takes a turn in the last half hour and things get a bit serious, but no less bizarre. If you need straightforward plots and simple easy to understand upbeat stories that always end happily and the same two people always end up in love and together—then why have you even bothered to read this far? This is a bizarre little film with a heart of gold. And if you’re afraid of letting things get serious, then at least watch the bit with Christopher Walken and Tom Jones’ “Delilah.”
But if you've ever wondered what love is really about, then this is a movie for you. It's about fear and love and getting tired of love and looking for passion and trying to feel alive. It's about dreaming of taking a big jet somewhere and never getting the chance. It's not the ordinary musical pap, and that's a good thing.
There are those who would envy the lusty fried-chicken lust that Nick gets with Tula, and that’s great, certainly, but I think what I really envy is that long-term love, the kind that Kitty talks about. It would sure be nice to have that kind of love, too. I'd like to think that if Susan Sarandon was cooking me lambchops and trimming my nosehairs that I wouldn't go looking for fried chicken elsewhere. But maybe I'm a hopeless romantic that way.
“Love is the vaguest word in the human vocabulary. It’s terrible and beautiful,” says Kitty Murder. Romance & Cigarettes is one of the better attempts to make love less vague. It’s terrible and beautiful.
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