
Twenty-something native Vermonter Mirabelle Buttersfield, having recently graduated from college, is finding her new life in Los Angeles not quite what she was expecting or hoping. An aspiring artist, she is barely eking out a living working as a clerk at the women's evening gloves counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and thus she can barely make the payments on her massive student loans. She treats her job with a certain distance, often daydreaming as she watches th... (Full plot summary below)
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Twenty-something native Vermonter Mirabelle Buttersfield, having recently graduated from college, is finding her new life in Los Angeles not quite what she was expecting or hoping. An aspiring artist, she is barely eking out a living working as a clerk at the women's evening gloves counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and thus she can barely make the payments on her massive student loans. She treats her job with a certain distance, often daydreaming as she watches the life of the rich as they shop at the store. She has made no friends, including from among her Saks colleagues, and thus lives a solitary existence, which does not assist in her dealing with her chronic clinical depression. So it is with some surprise that two men with a romantic interest in her enter her life almost simultaneously. The first is poor slacker Jeremy, who works as an amplifier salesman/font designer. Mirabelle continues dating Jeremy as only a relief to her solitary life, as Jeremy doesn't seem to understand how to treat her in the way she wants. Shortly after meeting Jeremy, she meets the second, wealthy fifty-something Ray Porter, who is the antithesis of Jeremy in almost every respect, including the fact that Ray is unwilling or unable to commit to Mirabelle, about which he is up front to her. To Mirabelle, that lack of commitment from Ray seems to be in name only, and as such she increasingly sees Ray as her boyfriend. Mirabelle has to decide if a long term future is either in the cards with Jeremy or Ray, which is made all the more complicated by an action by Jeremy to an off the cuff comment that she makes to him.
Leave your thoughts about Shopgirl.
| WaffleMovies.comWillie Waffledon't go to Shopgirl looking for a romantic comedy or fairy tale. Martin doesn't glamorize the lives and decisions of the characters. |
| San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleA film of wisdom, emotional subtlety and power. |
| Orlando WeeklySteve SchneiderShopgirl has a knack for showing people caught between their farthest-ranging dreams and the needs of the moment. And that's every one of us -- regardless of age, sex or the gloves we can afford. |
| Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaA quiet, glistening love story - or not-quite-love story - adapted from Martin's novella of the same name, Shopgirl is such an atypical Hollywood affair that it's almost startling. |
| Salt Lake TribuneSean P. MeansThat fragile look Claire Danes almost always shows, the one where she's on the verge of tears from melancholy, for once meets a character worthy of wearing it. |
| Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldWithout the saving grace of comedy, Martin's natural abrasiveness is off-putting, and he just doesn't have the stuff of a romantic lead. |
| FilmJerk.comBrian OrndorfShopgirl reveals a different, almost melancholy mood inside Steve Martin, and he seems ready to rip apart the conventions of a romantic feature film. |
| EmanuelLevy.ComEmanuel LevyThis bittersweet romance is intermittently poignant and well-acted, particularly by Claire Danes, but it can't decide whose story it's telling. |
| Arizona RepublicBill MullerThe movie isn't downright bad, but it's disappointing and forgettable, failing to emulate Allen or anybody else worth a darn. |
| New York PostKyle SmithLike Truffaut's heaviest work, it's less interested in what brings people together than in what keeps them apart, and it achieves a painful truth you won't find in dating comedies. |