Romance & Cigarettes DVD Review

The Coen Brothers are having quite a good year with their hit sensation No Country For Old Men, but it isn’t all they have been up to lately. Along with a contribution to Paris J’taime the brothers also acted as producers in their long-time actor collaborator’s Romance and Cigarettes. Obviously influenced by their filmmaking, writer/director John Turturro creates a magical and morally fueled cautionary tale about love and cigarettes through the use of lip-synched classic songs from Bruce Springsteen, Dusty Springfield, and James Brown. Some songs hold up better than others, making the film somewhat uneven, if not purposefully so.

When Nick (James Gandolfini) is caught having an affair with a seductive young woman named Tula (Kate Winslet), he suddenly finds himself in a house with an angry wife, Kitty (Susan Sarandon) and three rebellious daughters (Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro). When this doesn’t prove efficient anger for Kitty she enlists the help of her cousin Bo (Christopher Walken), who follows her during her investigation of the affair and the visit to the mistress’s house. One moment melodramatic and the next whimsical as hell, Romance and Cigarettes is a strikingly original film that is likely to be loved or loathed with equal intensity.

There are some obvious oddities in the casting when James Gandolfini is father of Aida Turturro, who is better known as his sister in the hit television show The Sopranos. Mary-Louise Parker is another of his daughter’s in Romance and Cigarettes, and meanwhile Christopher Walken dances around like he might as well be twenty-years-old. There is an off-beat quality to the bizarre musical style of lip-synching chosen in an almost karaoke quality in many of the musical numbers, and this paired with the strange casting give Romance and Cigarettes a dream-like quality. In submitting any form of realism in some areas, the entire film feels more theatrical in presentation.

The DVD has a film introduction by Turturro as well as a family affair commentary, with John and Amedeo Turturro. The making-of featurette is exceptionally ordinary, with the usual quotes from the likes of Mandy Moore’s pleasant demeanor. The DVD also has a few deleted scenes with an introduction by Turturro.