Broken English [2007]

1. She tries on the dress by draping it in front of her, inserting her head in the neck-holewhile it’s still on the hanger.
2. Julien grabs her bag, tugs on her arm and physically drags her off the train, up the stairs and into a cafe. He quickly orders two beers.
3. Parker Posey with a hangover: dazed expression, a dull but familiar pain, full of grit.

It blew me away. Completely romantic yet completely honest, which makes for some painful viewing. True romance is painful, a fact which most mainstream movies on the subject fail to adequately capture. The characters and situations are so believable, so funny. I don’t know the last movie I saw that’s felt so real to me–as in, real people up on the screen. People in which I saw parts of myself and parts of people I’ve known. Perhaps it just hit me in some of my soft spots. Parker Posey is fantastic, and it’s great to see Gena Rowlands as her mom (and Peter Bogdanovich as her stepfather!) I highly recommend this movie. And of course now I want to go back to Paris more than ever.