My Feelings About The Movie “Shopgirl” Are Layered On Many Levels

Ben and I enjoy overuse of the terms ‘layered’ and ‘levels’ to describe complexities of feeling and other things, usually when things are not complex at all. In any case, we watched Shopgirl Saturday night, and I would say yes, it’s a good film, but it left me feeling kind of uneasy, and I’m not exactly sure why. Well, yes, I think some of it has to do with seeing Angela Chase naked. Nevertheless, I thought Angela – I mean Claire Danes – was really great, perfectly cast, as was Jason Schwartzman, who I always love. I had read the book and enjoyed it. I think maybe seeing this young woman take up with this distant older man – well, perhaps my discomfort has something to do with the general truth of it. It was a familiar situation – not the older man thing, especially not the wealthy older man thing, just the distant man thing – and although it was easy to see that Claire Danes character was taken with Steve Martin, and I understood why she was taken with him. But I thought that Martin as an actor could have given the audience a little more of what was appealing about this man, which would have maybe made it even more ‘layered’ for me. It was like – he really didn’t have any particular charm at all as far as I could see, and as I said, although I completely believed Claire Danes, I wanted to see it for myself. There. And listen – I LOVE Steve Martin. LOVE him. On all levels and layers. But I didn’t love him here, and I realize I probably wasn’t supposed to, but I wanted just a teeny weeny bit more from him, just one more teeny little layer, some little quirk that made him human.