SHOPGIRL

Shopgirl, Steve Martin's new movie, starring Steve Martin, with a script by Steve Martin, from a novella by Steve Martin, directed by Anand Tucker, may someday be seen as a classic film of American Minimalism.

It is not a bad movie. It is a good movie. The acting is good. The visual quality is good. The story is good.

It is like a French romance movie without the wit, the intensity, the surprise, the romance, the je-ne-sais-quoi, the richness, or the imagination of the best French cinema.

Unfortunately, with only three characters, and bordering on a vanity project, it is impossible not to guess the course of the whole movie from the first few minutes. And while I believe that there are people in the real world who would behave like the people in the movie (or, presumably, the people in the novella, which I did not read), I was not sure that the characters as portrayed in the movie were actually doing things I believed that they would do.

It is, however, the very absence of depth that is the (possible) virtue of the movie, which is the essence of simplicity.

The film seems to be making a statement about people whose behavior is just a little more complicated than they themselves are. Most films are about people whose actions come from inside; in this movie, the characters seem to be blown by the winds.