johnnyboyz Let's be honest, there wasn't much romance in Romance & Cigarettes, was there? There wasn't really much of anything, bar a couple of dopey and un-enjoyable characters moping around about how 'down' they are or how regretful they are or how lonely they are or how they cannot communicate with anyone and how everything is horrible and terrible and life's nasty and it's all spiralling out of control. Fact of the matter is, the film is an hour and a half plus of big name actors and actresses dallying around feeling sorry for themselves beneath a facade of a study of love when really it's a daft exercise in how post-modern we can be with camera angles and musical numbers as we pretend to make a study of the complexity of relationships.I really disliked Romance & Cigarettes; I disliked every eccentric, style-driven, often cringe-inducing minute of it for a number of reasons. The film was made by a man called John Turturro, who I've seen in a number of very good films and who has worked with a couple of America's more exciting contemporary directors; names such as Martin Scorsese, Joel and Ethen Coen as well as Spike Lee. Trouble is, Turtutto is just an actor and, with only two prior directorial efforts credited to his name according to this site, it is advised he stick to acting in those small-but-very-noticeable roles in films that go on and garner much deserved attention. Clockers, Jungle Fever, Rounders and The Colour of Money spring to mind and it's quite feasible there are others out there I'm yet to stumble upon.The film masquerades as a cheery and colourful study on life, love and the tribulations that these things entail when the fact you've been stupid enough to cheat on your partner catches up with you. But this film, like its makers probably would as well, tells us that its lead character's fling with another woman was some kind of 'natural drive' or some kind of "spiritual calling that drove the male onto another spiritual level that forced him into confronting his fears and desires and thus.......blah, blah, blah" You know what? Rubbish John Turturro, absolute rubbish – you're a good actor at playing those snotty and wormy characters you often get in crime driven films (Miller's Crossing stands out in memory) but your style as a director completely masks the fact you're making a film about idiots, making idiotic and ill advised decisions under a pretense of something deeper.So if the director's out of his element then the cast additionally follow suit with a string of musical numbers done really badly that might completely miss the target in the sense people will find the bad singing and eccentricity of the pieces 'funny' more so than they will find what it is they're actually singing about quite humbling; which is what they should be feeling given the themes of loss of love and despair held within the songs. But the film itself is built around James Gandolfini's character named Nick Murder and his life which is balanced around working as some sort of maintainer of bridges with his buddy Angelo (Buscemi); his life at home with wife Kitty (Sarandon) and their three daughters while lastly, an elusive affair with Tula, in what is an image shredding role for Kate Winslet, given her prior work.I mean, the film is rubbish. It masquerades as this post-modern and energetic look at love and the dilemmas when you feel for two people and the moral choices that accompany it. No it's not; it's about a bored, working class American slob who's just not getting enough action, isn't satisfied enough and plays around a bit on the side for his own amusement. Very early on, there's a musical number that would-be about loneliness and general confusion as the morality of the situation looks to sink in but all the women wear pretty, quaint revealing costumes and we get certain close ups of certain areas the women possess and you begin to have this sick, dirty realisation that this is what everyone's more interested in. I mean, essays and books have been written about how cinema is constructed for and around a male perspective but this just sticks two fingers up at all of that and says "So what!? We're going through with it anyway!" Twinned with this is an annoying little subplot about equally annoying people, those being Nick and Kitty's three daughters Constance (Parker); Rosebud (Turturro) and Baby (Moore); whose full name is rather disturbingly 'Baby Murder', and their band that they try to get going which is flagging as each day goes by what with their horrid, annoying guitar and piano playing and singing – I know it's done badly on purpose but who on Earth thought it might be funny? Who actually finds it amusing? I read afterwards that the 'Moore' that plays Baby is a certain Mandy Moore, a singer and good God – why, oh why would you accept a role in a film in which you play a really bad musician if you're a musician yourself – perhaps she hadn't been selling many records, maybe the cash situation was low.So in short; it's a disaster – Angelo plays the Jiminy Cricket/conscience role that pops up and offers Nick tidbits of advice whenever the film feels he needs it, which is a bit silly. There's a little plot twist later on that leads the film off down another route towards supposed redemption (which is what the makers would tell you it's about) but it's very silly and bails the film out in terms on needing resolution. All in all, rather a large and silly mess made by someone who has worked with, arguably, the best but is far from those persons' respective level.

CitizenCaine John Turturro wrote and directed this personal labor of love about a working class Brooklyn couple who are facing the marriage crisis all wives dread: the husband's infidelity. What starts out as a fun, joyous musical, which is really unique, turns rather conventional in its last half hour. But before that, the film is loads of fun with inventive musical numbers utilizing pop songs to tell the story of James Gandolfini, a construction worker, who can't control his fetish for the voluptuous red-head Kate Winslet. It's the classic Madonna/whore situation for Gandolfini facing a late mid-life crisis. Several actors appear in brief standout roles: Kate Winslet as the lingerie salesgirl with the voluptuous curves; Steve Buscemi as Gandolfini's construction buddy with a Neanderthal outlook on women; Aida Turturro as one of Gandolfini's daughters; Christopher Walken as cousin Bo, a would-be hit man with an Elvis fixation; Elaine Stritch as Gandolfini's mother full of regrets about her own past. All of them are very funny and very good at the same time. Susan Sarandon is also pretty good as Gandolfini's long suffering wife. Mary-Louise Parker and Mandy Moore as the other daughters have little to do. Guys will no doubt like this a lot more than women will. The film's conclusion seems to indicate the Madonna/whore dilemma will still remain no matter how much men mess up their marriages. It's an entertaining film that peters out once Gandolfini gets sick. The songs used are perfect choices in most instances. *** of 4 stars.

jpschapira It's no coincidence that "Romance & Cigarettes" was executive produced by the Coen Brothers, who once in the brilliant "The Big Lebowski" created two musical sequences out of nothing to show the freedom making cinema meant for them. This film, written and directed by John Turturro, is the story of a husband that tries to get the love of his wife back, and I'm still not sure if it's mainly a musical; but I can assure you it's ruled by freedom.There's a great Spanish film, "El otro lado de la cama", that deals with a love quadrangle and in which the characters express their joys and sorrows in songs, and appear dancing and singing in the middle of the street. In this aspect, Turturro's film is exactly the same but I want to name a few things to emphasize the fact that "Romance & Cigarettes" was conceived with the beautiful idea of embracing the freedom that comes with film-making. First, the fact that Turturro, who has been married for more than twenty years and has two children, builds his story from the perspective of adult love. The main characters, Nick (James Gandolfini) and Kitty (Susan Sarandon), have been married for twenty years and as the film begins she discovers he's being unfaithful, and not precisely with a woman that could be compared to his wife, who angrily shouts: "I've been cooking for you for the last twenty years!".Nicky and Kitty's problems constitute the center of the movie (which gives place for Gandolfini to get out on the street and sing "A Man Without Love", as the whole city working men start joining him) that also deals with adolescent love in the relationship of one of Nick's daughters, Baby (Mandy Moore), and Fryburg (Bobby Cannavale); but this already starts bordering the ridiculous.The ridiculous is, of course, is an asset that shows Turturro's freedom. It's everywhere, if you pay attention. Take the scene in which we first meet the woman with whom Nick has the affair. Nick and some of his co-workers are dressed as firemen who try to put out the fire of a window, where a sexy woman can be seen dancing. She's Tula (Kate Winslet), and the music she dances with is Spanish Flamenco, but when we meet her then she has nothing to do with Spain; she's Irish (or maybe Scottish). Anyway, the thing is that the water coming from the pumps stops pumping and all these firemen end up dancing with Tula. It maybe hard for you to imagine it by reading it (and that's why you have to see the film), but it's fantastic.Another example of the film's careless and joyful existence is another one of Nicks daughters, Constance, played by Mary-Louise Parker. It's a wonderfully absurd performance by Parker, who is 44, and plays Constance as a rebellious teenager who reinvents herself everyday. Now we've got to wonder why Turturro might have given her the role: I'm almost sure that he did it because the actress is among the very few people who can really pull it off. Another annoying performance that is supposed to seem annoying and out of place is Nick's third daughter, Rosebud; a completely weird human being played by the director's cousin Aida Turturro. Just like it's no coincidence that the Coens produced the film, it's also logical that Turturro would find his casting options in the Coen universe: Steve Buscemi plays a minor role; James Gandolfini, a robust man and a serious character dramatic actor you would never imagine in a film of this type and whose best work is in a Coens film, achieves a perfection and a tenderness that we can sense was not difficult for him. Of course there are elements of the cast, like the enormous Parker, that come from somewhere else, which is Turturro's experience of some many years in the industry. What Kate Winslet makes of Tula, only she can make it; what Elaine Stritch does in two minutes can't be topped by anyone; Susan Sarandon is unique and Christopher Walken dancing is… well, you should already know about Walken. What I want to say is that Turturo has something to say, and it's not to be found in the songs that the film contains; or the script, which is a mixture of relationship knowledge (something greatly developed in "El Otro lado de la cama") and songs that turn into actual spoken words and vice-versa. In fact, it takes another bit of attention to notice the fact that the songs are partially sang by the actors (they sing over the originals) and sometimes some of them don't get the tempo right, that the choreographies are far from perfect (even though Tom Stern's cinematography gets the best out of every scene, acted and/or danced); but this doesn't make the film less brave or extravagant or fundamental in its message. I say too often that musicals need to fly on screen, because "Moulin Rouge!" soars and it set a bar. There's a plane in "Romance & Cigarettes" that is shown several times and it never seems to land: I think it's trying to make clear that the movie, even if we can't define it in the musical genre, flies…High.

Jim Grover I saw this film on TV and was immediately taken by it. The premise of a decent but flawed man (James Gandolfini), drawn by his mid-life crisis hormones away from his wife (Ms Sarandon) into the irresistible red-hot and rude clutches of a sex-shop sales assistant (Ms Winslet) from whence he heads inevitably to a tragic end, is nothing short of Greek. The cast is magnificent without exception and John Turturro'a direction highly confident. I suspected that this was a (lost) work by that greatest genius of television writing, Dennis Potter, that had (contrary to all previous attempts) been successfully adapted for the big screen. The surprise was that this was nothing to do with Potter and that Mr Turturro had penned the piece himself, proving me very wrong but in no way disappointed at the end result.