For anyone who’s ever yearned for love but looked in all the wrong places (and isn’t that most of us?), this romantic comedy-drama which marks the feature debut of writer-director Zoe Cassavetes (offspring of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands) will ring true. While the plot covers familiar territory, there are enough variations and diversions to keep the viewer guessing about the outcome, and Cassavetes strikes the right balance between low-key drama and light comedy.
Parker Posey, the reigning queen of American independent movies, is ideal as Nora Wilder, a 30-something who works as the guest relations manager at a hip hotel in Manhattan. She’s neurotic, feisty, insecure and funny: little wonder her over-protective mum (Ms Rowlands) worries at her inability to find a soulmate and warns, unkindly, 'the good ones get snapped up at your age."
Nora’s online search for a single man in her age group yields nothing so she agrees to a date set up by her mother, but it turns out the guy (Josh Hamilton) is still smitten with his ex-girlfriend. She breaks her self-imposed role against fraternising with hotel guests when she’s attracted to a hot young actor (Justin Theroux), but that ends badly. Her luck seems to change when she reluctantly attends a co-worker’s Fourth of July party, where she meets Frenchman Julien (Melvil Poupaud), who’s in town working on a movie. He’s handsome, suave, sensitive, charming and the perfect gentleman, and the couple enjoys a blissful weekend together.
It seems too good to last, and so it proves when Julien abruptly announces he must return to Paris the next morning. He begs her to come with him but she turns him down, understandably so given they barely know each other, she doesn’t speak French and has her job and flat. Will she change her mind, and if she does, can their relationship pan out? The second half of the movie deftly explores these questions along with a sub-plot involving Nora’s best friend Audrey (The Sopranos’ Drea de Matteo), whose seemingly happy marriage is in jeopardy.
