Romance and Cigarettes

Calling all Barton Fink fans. Ever wonder what Barton was writing at that typewriter, as he tried to bang out a story with "that Barton Fink feeling"? The answer, in part, is a "working class opera" called Romance and Cigarettes.

During the filming of Barton Fink, this was the story John Turturro was writing. And it's fitting. Fink's purpose, after all, was to create a "Theater for the Common Man."

Set against the bare bones, working class landscape of Queens, New York, Romance and Cigarettes has a wildness to it. It's bawdy, campy, and quirky -- reminiscent of a John Waters musical and the warped world of the Coen brothers (who produced the picture). Policemen and construction workers sing and dance in the street. Neighbors convene via a backyard band. A urologist tastes what's in the syringe before injecting his patient. There's a suspected suicide attempt by licorice. Dream sequences have their own dance routines. There are catfights. There are street rumbles with snow shovels. Hotel trysts end with full blown choreographic numbers in the hallways.

In the tradition of Dennis Potter (Pennies from Heaven, The Singing Detective), the music is not an original score, but a collection of pop tunes. When the characters can't find words to express their feelings, they delve into their own private soundtracks. In this case, it's James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Janis Joplin, Englebert Humperdink, and Tom Jones.

Like the opera format it riffs on, the story is one of passion gone awry, with a banished man making his return home. Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) is an ironworker who feels he's on top of the world -- until his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon) learns of his torrid affair with Tula (Kate Winslet), a trampy lingerie salesgirl. Nick's daughters (Mary-Louise Parker, Mandy Moore, and Aida Turturro) turn against him, and he suddenly finds himself cast out from his family, facing Tula's new demands. He employs the help of his co-worker (Steve Buscemi), and Kitty enlists the help of her Cousin Bo (Christopher Walken). When the dark side of Nick's infatuation with romance and cigarettes encroaches, he struggles to find his way back home, but it may be too late.

Gandolfini and Sarandon imbue their roles with humor and warmth, but it's the characters around them who bring the fire. Much of the fun comes from watching this all-star cast in roles either counter to their standard persona or take that persona up a notch or two.

Walken, as one would hope, takes it up a few. His hair is bigger. The psycho meter's cranked high. He's dangerous and he's dancing. He's one part deranged Elvis impersonator, one part back-alley Fred Astaire. Mandy Moore, as the daughter in love with a rock star wannabe, is a Queens Marilyn Munster. Steve Buscemi brings his charismatic strangeness to the role of a spacey co-worker in the tough spot of giving Nick advice on late-life circumcision. Eddie Izzard is wonderfully the anti-Izzard as the piano-playing pastor Gene Vincent. Aida Turturro brings a sweetness to the slow daughter who plays killer drums in the backyard band. Elaine Stritch, as Murder's ball-busting mother, delivers some of the movie's best zingers.

And as for Kate Winslet-- this is Kate Winslet like you've never seen her before. Here she's something torn from a dirty magazine. Flame-haired, falling out of her clothes, and soaking in filthy language, she rips into the role of low class slut with both claws. Winslet also proves she's no slouch in the musical theater department. In an underwater number, she appears as a drowning mermaid, delivering a haunting siren's song.

In the final scenes, the musical element fades away, and the story moves into a desperate, mournful territory. As soon as the boisterous song and dance is gone, it's sorely missed. While the film has its flaws, it's the flaws which give it its charm. Romance and Cigarettes is an original and funny film, and told from the heart.

Barton Fink would have been proud.