Shopgirl vs The Good Girl

There are few movie topics I like more than those focusing on unconventional friendships. Lost in Translation, Harold and Maude, E.T.; I'm a sucker for two seemingly opposite words bonding together. What never occurred to me is how I might feel if one of those unconventional friendships might cross the line into something more than friendship, and that that something more might result in one of those opposites being kind of a slimeball. It feels pretty bad, but in a good way. Shopgirl is an unexpected movie, one that never can completely fit the dimensions of the human heart onto the screen. And isn't that how it should be? At one point, one of the characters asks, “Why don't you love me?” and if you've been alive a couple years, you're likely to feel the sting of what it means to want to ask the question, let alone what it must feel like while waiting for the answer. Shopgirl has been marketed as a romantic comedy, but nothing in Sweet Home Alabama made me feel like that.

Shopgirl follows that oh-so-common theme in Hollywood of basing movies on books I didn't read. It was written by Steve Martin, who also handles the screenwriting duties and stars as Ray Porter, a millionaire who does whatever he wants. He's one of those people who has a rich desire for nice things and responds to this desire by purchasing every nice thing he can think of. His house is exquisite, as is his private plane and his other house and his suits. He probably uses really nice pens. He probably had an iPod in like 1985. When you're standing outside waiting for Best Buy to open at midnight so you can be the first to own an Xbox 360, he's all “Oh that old thing?”

And for some reason, Ray Porter wants Mirabelle Buttersfield. Well first of all, you hear someone's named Mirabelle Buttersfield, you figure they have a story, and if you're rich, you've likely got a few free afternoons. Secondly, Mirabelle is played by Claire Danes, who's just about as lovely and thoughtful as any glove salesperson has a right to be. It's taken a while, but Danes has arrived. It seems like every year is supposedly her year, but this is her first true leading role, and she shines. Mirabelle is in Los Angeles from Vermont, a talented girl with little money or resources, but lots of style and warmth. She wants to be loved and complimented and hugged, and here's Ray, leaving her secret gifts and wanting to buy her dinner, and he does hug her, a lot, so the love will come, right? It doesn't, really. Ray feels like they have an understanding. Ray enjoys buying things for Mirabelle, and he enjoys having her as a companion to events and dinners. It doesn't hurt that she's witty and self-aware and intelligent. But Ray wants to keep his options open, and considers Mirabelle less a girlfriend than just the latest acquisition of beauty and function in his life. She's the smaller, more efficient version of whoever he dated last year. She's like Gwyneth Nano. Mirabelle lets Ray see parts of herself that otherwise would be restricted to just her and the audience. She's an artist, photographing and sketching herself in shady, half-finished blurs; and she's practical, in her glasses and tiny pickup; and she's heartbreaking, tossing out her anti-depressants when she thinks she's found someone to take their place.

In a less intelligent movie, there would be a scruffy frog prince for Mirabelle to warm up to; someone to counter Ray's cold behavior and posh lifestyle. Someone to love her for who she really is. And okay, Shopgirl has one of those too. Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) wants to date Mirabelle, but he doesn't want to pay, and he's not going compliment her for looking lovely, and he's going to be terrible in bed. And while Ray makes his millions in technology, Jeremy barely makes quarters for laundry designing type fonts and working as a roadie for the band Hot Tears. He's such a slacker, Mirabelle doesn't even know she's in a love triangle, let alone that Jeremy's part of it. Jason Schwartzman is good in the role, giving Jeremy such specific mannerisms and speech patterns he's likely to remind you of more than a couple couch-crashers you've known.

Ah, but he's reading self-help books, and damned if that designer suit isn't in his size.

Shopgirl doesn't really get many places it's going through any conventional movie clichés, and that's a relief. However, there is the matter of Steve Martin's narration, which pops up periodically to tell us what Ray and Mirabelle are thinking and feeling, when we never, not once, need help in that department. And Mirabelle has a group of lunch friends at work who show up exactly once, leading me to believe there are other lunches on the cutting room floor. But mainly, it's sincere, and smart, and all the stars over LA shine brightly, and damned if Claire Danes isn't luminous, even curled up on the bed sobbing.

Shopgirl has common bonds with Pretty Woman (Mirabelle isn't a hooker, but she's sure made to feel like one) and Reality Bites (talented, wayward waif simultaneously courted by slacker and yuppie), but what drew me in most was the depression of Mirabelle, and how crushing it feels to be behind that sales counter when you're meant to be a million other places, if only someone would tell you the location of one of those places, and maybe spring for the ride. The Good Girl captures that same feeling.

Jennifer Aniston plays Justine, a department store clerk, exhausted by constantly weighing options she might not even have. So she just sort of stares until it's time to go home. And at home, she's married to John C. Reilly, who is so talented, but as a movie husband is rarely the solution anyone is running towards.

Justine begins an affair with a disturbed younger coworker, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. He claims his name is Holden, but he's reading Catcher in the Rye, so you won't be surprised when he gets home and his mother calls him Tom. Tom drinks a lot, but he and Justine are sort of perfect for each other in that small-town way where if you both like to drink and you're up for doing it practically everywhere, well, there you go. And unfortunately, they get caught by Justine's husband's stoner friend (Tim Blake Neilson), and he blackmails her in a way I won't spoil, and the result is fairly horrifying, and whether or not Justine ever lives up to the title of her movie, well, at least she proves herself adept at making shit up as she goes along.

The Good Girl was directed by Miguel Arteta, but more importantly, it was written by Mike White, who usually makes either easily-digestible independent weirdness (like this) or weirdly-skewed takes on mainstream entertainments (like School of Rock). Because of him, The Good Girl has moments of satire (Zooey Deschanel plays the least competent department store employee ever, which basically insures that she'll never be fired) that blend nicely into moments of humanity and sadness (the death of one of Justine's friends, alongside, well, practically everything else). A lot of The Good Girl makes me uncomfortable, and hey, that's what I'm here for. Shopgirl could have layered on even more sadness and heartbreak; I eat that shit up.

Of course, Justine doesn't have Mirabelle's choices, or talents. She pretty much has to take life as it comes, not having the benefit of designer gown-fittings or gallery openings. That she's loved, and knows it, probably balances things out a bit.

Shopgirl: B+
The Good Girl: A-