"Romance & Cigarettes"

John Turturro's "Romance & Cigarettes" is one of the most audacious movies I've ever seen. It takes audacity to have James Gandolfini, following a confrontation with his wife Susan Sarandon, during which she tells him "I hate you with all the hate that you can hate with," to burst into song. It takes audacity to cast Aida Turturro as Gandolfini's daughter. It takes audacity to have Sarandon in a church singing "Piece of My Heart" backed by a choir that gives new meaning to the word "eclectic." It takes audacity to have Kate Winslet, having a ball playing a red-haired tramp in Queens with a Lancashire accent, send up her "Titanic" personna by singing a love song underwater as she appears to be drowning.

Unfortunately, all this movie has is audacity. Other than that, it's like spending an hour and 45 minutes with some well known actors in a karaoke bar and, in its last third, the movie forgets what was supposed to be.

The movie tells the story of a blue-collar bridge worker (Gandolfini) who returns to his home on the border of New York's Kennedy Airport one afternoon to confront the facts that his wife (Sarandon) has learned of his affair with a sultry underwear saleswoman (Winslet). The rest of the movie involves Gandolfini considering a circumcision which he thinks will improve his sexual performance, Sarandon calling her cousin (Christopher Walken) to help her get even with Winslet, and one of Gandolfini-Sarandon's three daughters, Mandy Moore, and her plans to marry a local jerk (Bobby Cannavale) who wants the world to know his name is "Fryburg." This gives Ms. Moore the opportunity to utter one of the film's best lines: "Dad, I'm going into wedlock."

For the first two thirds of this film, these actors play out their scenes to the hilt while they break out into such songs as "Trouble," "Prisoner of of Love," "Red Headed Woman," and the film's show-stopper, "Deliliah," with Walken channeling not only Tom Jones but also John Travolta and George Chakiris.

Eventually, however, the movie collapses under its own weight, especially during its third act when it forgets the grand musical numbers to explore such issues as redemption and mortality. I also have this strange feeling that this movie would have never seen the light of day if it had been written and directed by a relative unknown and not John Turturro, if it had not assembled this marvelous cast of actors (I didn't even mention Mary-Louise Parker as a third daughter, Steve Buscemi as Gandofini's clueless co-worker and Elaine Stritch, who has the movie's single best scene, as Gandolfini's mother) and if it had not been backed by the Coen Brothers. It says something that the film was made in 2005 and floated around for awhile--playing the Venice Film Festival that year, opening to a lukewarm receptance in a handful of European countries in 2006, before getting booked into a limited U.S. run only last September.

I'll give Turturro credit for having the chutzpah to attempt something this audacious. It's a shame he didn't have the moxie to pull it off.

Grade: D+