After watching The Man With Two Brains, I thought I would pick up this relatively recent (two springs ago) addition to the Nogglestead media library. A while ago, I started, tastefully (I hope) placing films and television shows atop the to-watch and video game cabinets; most of them have their spines/titles facing up, but at the end, I have a box (from that same trip in April 2023)where the boxes face out, and this film was often at the front, actually facing out. So on my current Steve Martin kick (a well-spaced out binge), I thought I would roll with it.
I read the novella almost 20 years ago (2006), and I summarized its plot there, and I thought it was, not meh, but eh. It works a little better as a movie.
In it, the titular shopgirl sells women’s gloves in an upscale department store in Beverly Hills. Well, she stands behind the glove counter–even then, gloves were an archaic affectation. The filmography really sets up her isolation and loneliness. She is a depressed artist from Vermont who hasn’t really made connections in California. She does meet a slacker at a laundromat, played by Jason Schwartzman, whom she dates and sleeps with because there’s nobody else, and she wants to feel a connection. An older, wealthy guy played by Steve Martin visits LA sometimes and starts a relationship with her. However, they have different ideas of what the relationship is. He thinks it’s more casual, but he develops feelings for her. She thinks it’s more serious. However, events test and then break the relationship, and it ends with a coda where she ends up with the slacker, who has gone on to make something of himself because of what she said to him, and Martin’s character regrets how it turned out. Basically, he kept something of himself from her even though she shared everything of herself, or something.
It’s kind of a downer of a film if you take Martin’s character to be the main character and protagonist, and it stuck with me for a couple of days. Probably because I’m a little older these days, and I could probably be a better husband.
Still, it shows that Steve Martin is a pretty insightful writer and is unafraid to take a chance making films, although unfortunately he has had more success with silly comedies and old intellectual properties.
