Actor and filmmaker John Turturro wrote and directed this emotionally resonant blend of music and drama. Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) is an ironworker who has been married for years to Kitty (Susan Sarandon), who works as a seamstress and is the mother of Nick's three daughters. While Nick loves his wife, his head is turned by Tula (Kate Winslet), a sexy salesgirl at a lingerie shop, and soon they're having a passionate affair. When Kitty finds out about Nick's infidelity, she becomes enraged
and kicks him out of the house, forcing him to decide what he really wants out of life and what is most important to him. Along the way, many of the characters in the film periodically turn to their favorite songs to explain and amplify their emotions, lip-synching along with the original recordings. Romance & Cigarettes also stars Steve Buscemi, Mandy Moore, Christopher Walken, Eddie Izzard, and Elaine Stritch. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
In a season seasoned with off-beat originality in the movies, from Lars and the Real Girl to I'm Not There, you still have not seen anything quite like John Turturro's extraordinary Romance and Cigarettes.
It is not every musical that features lung cancer and James Gandolfini singing along with Engelbert Humperdinck to that every-day-I-wake-up 1960s standard 'A Man Without Love.'
This singing-along-to-the-radio effect has a dingy charm that honors the blue-collar Italian setting, yet Turturro spoils it by turning the movie into a hip star party.
Romance & Cigarettes is not your usual drama about a troubled marriage. It attempts something startlingly original by melding light opera with soap opera.
Se trata de toda una sorpresa, un experimento hecho con pasión y mucha complicidad %u2013se nota- y sin temor al ridículo, lo que la convierte en una obra inusual y arriesgada.
It shouldn't work, but there's something beautiful in Turturro's non-judgmental, almost affectionate, exposure of human love as the courting dance of clueless primates
The film has an overall tonal inconsistency and suffers from the occasional bout of tin-ear-itis, which ultimately derails this sometimes interesting attempt at reinvigorating the genre.
I love John Turturro so it really pains me to report that he misses the mark quite badly with this film - it's not a terrible film but it is pretty bad compared to how it should have turned out. I loved the acting - Gandolfini & Winslet in particular, I loved the singing and dancing - an unexpected surprise and I loved
the way it was directed, very cool and stylish. It's just that the story drags like a one legged horse, yes its surreal non-liner narrative was interesting and fun in parts, but for the most part, it was frustrating, silly and not particularly entertaining. I really don't like writing bad things about this film, I guess because I like everyone involved and i really wanted to like it. Aw well, I hope he keeps directing, I've been meaning to catch up with Passione as it looks good!
In agreement with Jim Hunter, unless you're Paul Thomas Anderson, having actors sing along with a recording of a song IS "remarkably lame." And especially since so much of Turturro's spoken dialogue has such intriguing rhythms (Kitty's "deep" poem), he should have gone the extra mile and hired a
real composer. As is, the songs aren't as thematically relevant as the ones in, say Singin' In the Rain or Moulin Rouge, exemplars of this musical subgenre in which popular songs are put into a movie instead of originally written for it.Kate Winslet though. Man, has she got that va-va-vavoom! Love her trashy accent, her trashy dancing, her trashy talk.
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