Broken English

In Zoe Cassavetes' (daughter of director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands) debut film—a presumed romantic comedy—indie darling Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a morose unattached “guest relations specialist” at a New York hotel, whose mother (Rowlands) points to the supposedly perfect marriage of Nora's best friend in order to berate her daughter for not finding a husband. To make matters worse, Nora's date with a hotel guest proves to be a one-night bust. After 30 minutes of this single-girl blues stuff (the only scene we're spared is the one in which the heroine sits depressed in front of a TV, eating ice cream straight out of the carton), Nora meets a free-spirited Frenchman named Julien (Melvil Poupaud) with whom she hits it off, and for the next half-hour the pair meet and talk in the fashion of bad Gallic movies…until he returns home, leaving her more depressed than ever. Nora decides to follow him to Paris, but—not surprisingly—has lost his phone number, so she spends the whole trip searching for him. I won't reveal the ending, but let's just say that even though Cassavetes comes from an illustrious cinematic family, Broken English is utter puffery, and is not helped by Posey's mannered performance. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include an episode of Higher Definition about the film (28 min.), 17 minutes of deleted scenes, a 16-minute “Fragments of a Longer Story…” making-of featurette, and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a disappointing indie flick.] (F. Swietek)