Shopgirl (Tucker, 2005)

If this makes any sense, Shopgirl is a movie I love a lot more than I like. The film gently tugged at my kindred heart, but like its characters, it is too clunky and awkward for its own good.

At the heart of the film is Mirabelle, a painfully shy girl working at Saks’ glove counter. Simultaneously courted by a millionaire of distinguished gray hair (Steven Martin) and a slacker no-job (Jason Schwartzman), Mirabelle finds herself in an unfamiliar place—the center of attention. As a love triangle between these three characters, Shopgirl is an unsatisfying story, but Mirabelle, a bud of quiet beauty and extreme shyness, is an exquisitely written and acted portrait of a Vermont fish out of her water in LA. By the end of the film, which is a bit deus ex machina for my tastes but a lovely bookend nonetheless, Mirabelle learns to grow and perhaps even blossom.

There is a fine line between comedy and tragedy, a line that Shopgirl, a film about loneliness, gradually blurs. There are moments of wonderfully realized painful awkwardness, but the film itself has too many unintentional blunders as well. The fancy filters, the intrusive score, the heavy-handed narration, and Anand Tucker’s overdirection threaten to overwhelm the delicate emotional presence of Mirabelle. Shopgirl needs to be stripped of its bells and whistles, baring its bittersweet core—a tender, aching heart.