ZoeCassavetes Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Note: This film can't be reviewed without spoilers right from the get-go, so fair warning.

There are about a billion movies released each year, and even someone like myself, whose business is movies, can't see them all. Some of this year's biggest blockbusters and most talked-about art house films will undoubtedly slip by me. So it's certainly possible that director Zoe Cassavetes hasn't seen the film Before Sunset*, which came out three years ago. What's harder to believe is that none of the actors, crew members, or studio people involved with Broken English saw it either. If they had, surely they would have pulled her aside at some point and whispered in her ear that the ending of her film is, while not an actionable rip-off of Sunset's ending, close enough to make any audience member who has seen both films do a double-take. Let's put it this way -- a friend of mine who saw Broken English with me, and is only a casual movie watcher, actually perked up at the end and said 'Hey, isn't that what happened in that other Paris movie, with Ethan Hawke?" That's how similar the two are.

Putting that aside, the film is a passable -- sometimes more than passable -- romantic comedy about a Manhattanite named Nora, played by Parker Posey, whose fast-approaching collision with age 40 reminds her that she has very little in her life. Nora's job is something of a hospitality person at a fancy hotel -- early on we see her tending to whims of a flirty rock star played by Justin Theroux. Her dating life is a revolving door of disappointments and false starts with weirdos and barely-there guys who pay little attention to her, although on the plus side she does live in Manhattan so she at least gets taken to places like the Film Forum, which gets an extended cameo in the film.We actually get to see the theater's notoriously drink-holder-free armrests caught on film -- if only one of the characters had actually commented on it. And of course it goes without saying that there's a best-friend for Parker's character to lean on -- she's played by The Sopranos' Drea de Matteo, in a pretty straight-forward role.

According to a report in Screen Daily this morning, little Zoe Cassavetes is set to join dad John and big brother Nick as a feature film director. With only a single short under her belt, Cassavetes has lined up an impressive cast to star in her debut, including Gena Rowlands (who she gets to call "Mom"), Parker Posey, and French icon Jeanne Moreau. Entitled Broken English, her film explores the life of a woman in her 30s who "is becoming debilitated by a lack of luck in love." (What on earth does that mean? Like, physically crippled? That seems just a little bit dramatic, doesn't it?)

Despite the impressive cast, the movie's budget is less than $2 million. It's being produced by Andrew Fierberg, Christina Weiss Lurie, and Steven Shainberg (Fierberg produced Secretary, which Shainberg directed) for Vox3 Films, a new independent production house based in New York; in order to succeed, Fierberg believes the studio needs to keep all budgets below $2 million, and that $1 million is ideal. If the money to produce a film cannot be raised within a year and a half, however, he sends writers and directors on their ways, so that their ideas don't die for a lack of funds. Though the company has only completed a handful of projects (including Shainberg's forthcoming Fur, which stars Nicole Kidman), they have six in various stages of development, and hope to "build a library of low-budget films" within a few years.