Last night I watched 'Broken English'. I had high hopes for it - Parker Posey + directed by Zoe Cassavetes (daughter of John 'What's your take on' Cassavetes - so I figured there was a reasonable chance some of the talent was passed on, right?)
(Spoiler alert.)
No! The premise is that Parker Posey's character is young woman in New York who feels desperately single. So basically it's 2 hours of her being mopey and unpleasant to a variety of men, some of whom are also mopey and/or unpleasant (or unaccountably persist in being interested despite her total lack of a personality - most of her lines are some variation on 'I'm so anxious/tired/lame/doomed to be single forever!') Even the way she walks - a kind of knock-kneed, tripping shuffle - is irritating. In the end, of course, a handsome old Frenchman in a bar tells her that she has to love herself before she can find love w/ anyone else, and then she lights a candle meaningfully in a cathedral, and finds true love on the Metro.
I guess... I just wasn't expecting an earth-tones Sex and the City. A black comedy would have been nice. Or an ending that didn't imply that the point and inevitable reward of being at peace w/ yourself is finding someone to love you. Or some kind of indication that there are bigger questions in the world than any one person's marital status. I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of women who worry about finding someone - but I am totally unsympathetic to movies that use PARKER POSEY - a NATIONAL TREASURE - to drably illustrate something that Sarah Jessica Parker, fer Chrissake, has already demonstrated with a lot more pizazz and some actual humour.
I bought that movie bootleg in China, with the same aspirations and ultimate disappointment. I hope you have seen "House of Yes" (won't let me do italics) because it feeds your desire for dark comedy with the added bonus of watching Parker Posey be an evil bitch to Tori Spelling.
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