Steve Martin's Los Angeles is a much more interesting place than the actual Los Angeles.
The City of Angels he creates in Shopgirl, much like in L.A. Story, seems a hell of a lot more literal than reality would seem to indicate. If you're going to wrap a story around a beautiful girl whose dreamy eyes ensorcel men of all ages into falling for her quiet charm, it's hard to pick a better ethereal muse than Claire Danes. She's definitely the kind of deep-eyed woman you'd occasionally see behind the counter somewhere that would make you sneak glances and concoct elaborate ways to try to win her affections. She can be just that breathtaking.
Anand Tucker directed, but Steve Martin starred, produced and adapted the screenplay from his own novella, and considering how many shots look like they jumped right off of a canvas, it really seems to reflect his predilection for art collecting. It's a simple story - a lonely girl in a handicapped-inaccessible apartment meets an energetically goofy loser named Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) at a laundromat and they an awkward, forced bit of coupling before she's courted by a rich older man named Rigby Reardon - no... Navin Johnson... no, Ray Porter. He's a logician, but what he does isn't really what matters. I just wanted to say 'logician.'
Never has the uncertain weirdness of new relationships looked so elegant. It looks like some kind of modern fairy tale in its wistful moments, and a mood piece in its blue periods. It's got its problems, though. It feels a bit thin, but it's not even a novel. It's a novella, so you'll have that. Also, there are random points where a narrator suddenly breaks in, and it's Steve Martin. So Ray will say something, then the narrator speaks in his voice, but it's omniscient, not an inner monologue. So it just seems to shift things all out of whack for a while. It works at the end, and the final line is a nice little bit of perfect, but it feels shoehorned in throughout. Thankfully, it's not very often. The dialog is a bit sparse, and there's a lot of simple gazing at the beauty on the screen while a symphony plays some appropriate accompaniment. Excellent cinematography that almost makes you want to live in L.A.
Almost.
