Two words...

In a peak scene in John Turturro’s "homemade musical," Romance and Cigarettes, Susan Sarandon comes to the lingerie shop in which Kate Winslet, who is Sarandon's husband's lover, works. to confront her.

Just watching these two women, two of the best and best-looking actresses alive, square off across a counter is enough to make the heart leap.

Just when you think it can't get any better, it does. How? Two words:

Cat fight!

(Somebody filmed my dream!)

Besides writing a script which is nearly equal parts fun and grim, as director, many of Turturro's shots are well-chosen, and he gives his actors space in which to do solid work.

Turturro is a talented actor himself: Do The Right Thing, Quiz Show, a recurring part on Monk as Adrian's brother, To Live and Die in L.A., the amazingly underrated Luzhin Defense, Cradle Will Rock, Summer of Sam; Jungle Fever.

That probably goes without saying, but I say it anyway because I think it had a lot to do with why his cast trusted him so much, which they clearly did.

For James Gandolfini to agree to play the lead character in a musical (yes! He sings! He dances!)...well, I infer a great deal of trust from that.

Gandolfini, along with Sarandon, is an actor singing, not a singer trying to act. He acts beautifully and sings movingly in-character, overcoming any feared ridicule for his rusty croak of a voice by virtue of the emotion with which he sings.

Songs ranging from Engelbert Humperdinck to Bruce Springsteen to Irving Berlin, I might add.

--It probably doesn't hurt that I'm one of the few (apparently) who never quite got on board with The Sopranos. If you were, I can see how that might be a stumbling block.

Sarandon, as Gandolfini's wounded wife, to my knowledge hasn't sung in a film since her Rocky Horror days. Her voice may have lost some of its purity but it's hard to tell because just as likely, she was making choices for how this character would sing. In a word, bluesy.

And then there's Winslet. What can I say about her that won't make this read like it was written on ecstasy? She's beautiful, desirable, admirable and bound to win an Oscar before she dies. Here she's all sex and all soul and all heart in one.

I already knew from Heavenly Creatures that Winslet has a lovely singing voice, but she should use it more often, her performances here scorch, love and heartbreak.

She reminds me in a way, here, of Julie Andrews, only the woman we've long heard Andrews really is behind the limited Sound of Mary Poppins public image.

The one who famously replied to a new writer on her TV show's intention to "dirty up" that image by dryly asking, "Would it help if I screwed the band?"

Winslet's character too has a mouth like a sailor's girlfriend (which now that I think of it, she is-Gandolfini's character is an ex-Navy man).



But Turturro has the wit and skill as a writer, and Winslet the gifts as an actress, that we can see the soft edges of a girl who tells the lover who is trying to leave her,

"You couldn't say that if I was licking your balls."

Eddie Izzard does a turn as a sympathetic priest, coming off much better than he did in Across The Universe, maybe because Turturro makes of him better use, giving him the talking parts of "Ten Commandments of Love" ("Thou shalt never love another...").

As written, only Gandolfini and Sarandon are given much in the way of an "arc," the supporting players like Mandy Moore, as one of the couple's daughters, have to take their moments.

Moore rocks; now I'm even more flattered that she's got that little crush on me. Oddly, the one member of the cast who is a professional singer, she doesn't have as many good musical moments.

This is due mostly to the fact that her character is in a bad band with her sisters. But, we do get to see her deliver a verse and chorus of "I Want Candy," which ain't too bad, izit?

Moore makes up for rarely being given a musical spotlight with the way she draws you in during her dramatic scenes. I couldn't keep my eyes off her, and in a film also starring Sarandon, Winslet, and Mary-Louise Parker, that is a compliment.

But I got a better one. I also started thinking which of my characters I'd like to see her play, and if there's a higher compliment I can give an actress, I don't know it.

Mary-Louise Parker appears to have lost the most in the editing...
though she looks like a (fallen) angel and inhabits her character, another daughter, believably and well.

But at least two of her best scenes can only be viewed in the "deleted..." section.

In one of these, BTW, she is seen kissing another woman, which ought to get some segments of her fanbase breathing heavily.

I would have kept her character built up and cut Christopher Walken back down. I'm just not as charmed by Walken as it seems many are.



Turturro's cousin, Aida, has a great moment or two in the main film as the third daughter.

Also, in the deleted scenes, there's a joke he played on her. While shooting a scene in which she, eyes closed and in bed, starts to both verbalize and lose herself in a romantic fantasy, he had a crew member strip down to his underpants, get in bed and lie on top of her.

But, seriously, folks...

I really enjoyed and liked this film. It's fair to say that it's uneven, but what I would have cut and sewed back on in order to "even it out" is not what anybody else would have (see above comments).

And it's still a better film musical than, say, Chicago.

As a whole, the film (and the experience of watching it) both warmed my heart and broke it.

Warmed, because Turturro reveals in the commentary and interviews that he began writing this picture and thinking about it while he was acting in Barton Fink.

Don't bother to go Yahoo! I'll tell you that film was released in 1991.

That's a long time to keep a dream.

But broke my heart, because one of the things the film is about is some people having to come to terms with the realization that they're probably not going to "make it."

You may have to make an effort to find this one, but it's well worth it.