Gerald Wright's Movie Coverage      

"BROKEN ENGLISH"

Directed/Written by: Zoe Cassavetes (Debut Feature)
Running time: 96 mins.
Release date: June 22, 2007
Genre: Comedy
Format: HDCam

Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a thirty-something Manhattanite who is cynical about love and relationships. Working her life away in a posh trendy downtown hotel as a concierge and catering to VIPs, she is pessimestic in thinking anything good will happen in her life. She wonders if and when she could ever meet "Mr. Right" when her best friend Audrey Andrews (Drea De Matteo) has the so-call perfect marriage. It doesn't help that her overbearing parents Vivien Wilder-Mann (Gena Rowlands) and Irving Mann (Peter Bogdanovich) takes every opportunity to remind her that she's still unattached.

After a series of ridiculously bad dates, Nora meets Julien (Melvil Poupaud), a care-free Frenchman with a passion for living. Some people might consider Julien the playboy type, but he is one in a harmless way. Expecting another disastrous ending in a relationship, Nora tries to avoid making the same mistakes by not committing herself to Julien. But with a turn of events after the break-up of the two, Nora finds herself getting away from it all with Audrey, who is bored in her marriage, with a trip to Paris for the first time - with a new optimistic outlook on life and love. But love triumphs when she decides to take another try at love in her search for Julien.

With fine dialogue and snappy humor this film is much like other love stories, but in this movie you can see and feel the characters' pain and insecurity grow. I guess, I'm a Parker Posey fan because she has the knack of pulling off a great performance in the characters she portrays. Gena Rowlands, as always, was grand. I would hope sometime soon someone might think of offering her a lifetime achievement award. The film's shooting locations included the most fascinating New York City and Paris spots that added a great sense realism to the modern theme of the movie. This is a good date movie.