Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Romance & Cigarettes Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 14, 2015

There’s been a bit of a backlash to some critics who called Angelina Jolie Pitt’s By the Sea a “vanity project,” with a variety of folks taking these critics to task for what is perceived as a sexist comment. After all, these critics of critics complain, you don’t regularly hear of a male’s film being a “vanity project,” and while that may not be true in every instance, there’s probably a certain validity to the thesis. A brief comparison of Google searches contrasting “Angelina Jolie vanity project” and “John Turturro vanity project” provides anecdotal if hardly scientific evidence to back up this assertion, for the Jolie query brings up an astounding 195,000 results, with many if not all of the titles of the first several pages of those results literally saying “vanity project” right there up front. The Turturro search is relatively miniscule by comparison, offering a mere 12,700 results, with surprisingly few featuring the verbiage “vanity project” in the main titles. The really interesting thing with regard to the Turturro search is that virtually all of the results which mention the noted actor-director and “vanity project” together at least somewhere tend to be about Fading Gigolo, Turturro’s 2013 attempt to make a Woody Allen film (replete with Woody Allen, no less). That may strike some who come to Romance & Cigarettes as at least a little ironic, for this 2005 quasi-musical is, if not a “vanity project” in the strictest sense of the term, at the very least a “high concept” outing that never quite delivers on whatever promise Turturro must have felt his concept provided.

A cursory review of Romance & Cigarette’s rather starry cast list really gives no indication as to the outré offering that is in store. James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon play unhappy marrieds Nick and Kitty Kane Murder. Kitty suspects Nick of having been unfaithful with a red haired temptress named Tula (Kate Winslet), upbraiding him in front of their more or less adult daughters Baby (Mandy Moore), Constance (Mary-Louise Parker) and Rosebud (Aida Turturro) after she stumbles across a poem Nick has written to Tula’s—well, private parts. This roiling dysfunction provides the central conflict of the film, as a number of relatives and/or hangers on show up in various vignettes. These include Nick’s work cohort Angelo (Steve Buscemi), the local pastor and choir director (Eddie Izzard), and Kitty’s cousin Bo (Christopher Walken) who comes to his relative’s emotional aid. Other supporting roles are filled by the likes of Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris, Cady Huffman and Elaine Stritch. Prospective audience members who are educated in the ways of musical theater may realize one kind of odd thing about this roster of performers, especially since Romance & Cigarettes is a kinda sorta musical: virtually no one in the film is a singer, and that includes several actors like Walken, Sarandon and Stritch who have done musicals at some point in their careers.

Wait—what? “Kinda sorta musical”? That’s right, folks, Turturro takes a basic “kitchen sink” drama about an unhappy marriage and supposedly gussies it up by having the cast sing and dance. But, wait, you also get—this isn’t a musical in the traditional sense, and in fact ultimately tends to resemble some very well known actors performing karaoke. In the perhaps overly precious environment of the film, actual source cues culled largely (though not exclusively) from pop and rock stalwarts like Engelbert Humperdinck and Bruce Springsteen are utilized while various characters sing with the tunes. It’s a really odd and finally kind of unworkable conceit that tends to do little other than draw attention to itself.

One of the signal accomplishments of West Side Story was how it somehow managed to offer singing and dancing Manhattan gangs, and it all seemed organic and, yes, even realistic. Here in Romance & Cigarettes, we’re greeted to things like sights of a coterie of east coast garbage guys warbling along to Engelbert Humperdinck’s “A Man Without Love”, and the result is simply odd. The funny thing is that Turturro obviously has an eye for musical staging, and the actual framings of the many musical sequences are handled with a great deal of aplomb. But Romance & Cigarettes is an exercise of style desperately in search of substance, all done in a sing-along style that creates distance not just between the audience and the characters, but between the actors and the very material they’re supposedly helping to bring to life.

Romance & Cigarettes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Romance & Cigarettes is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Perhaps because the film disappeared so quickly in its very brief theatrical run (which took over two years to completely unspool globally), elements are in largely pristine shape, with very little in the way of age related wear and tear on display. Colors are a bit dowdy looking at times, some of which is certainly intentional, but when elements like Tula's bright red hair come into view, the palette pops with some immediacy. Detail is very good to excellent, especially in close-ups where things like skin textures are easily discernable (see screenshot 6 for a close-up of Gandolfini's "toe print").

Romance & Cigarettes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Romance & Cigarettes' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 offers consistent immersion in the many sung moments, though prioritization is a bit dicey due to the film's emphasis on actors singing along with pre-existing pop and rock tracks. Otherwise, the film is fairly restrained from a sound design perspective, relying on fairly turgid dramatic dynamics that typically have two characters simply talking to each other, an aspect which doesn't offer a lot of opportunity for "wow" surround activity. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range appealing wide on this problem free track.

Romance & Cigarettes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:56)

Romance & Cigarettes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm a sucker for musicals as some regular readers of my reviews may be aware, and I was actually kind of rooting for Romance & Cigarettes, despite the fact that it's a kind of "karaoke" experience rather than a true exemplar of integrated song and dance within a narrative. But Turturro's reach far exceeds his grasp here, and his concept simply never resonates with the material well enough to justify its existence. Still, this is a true "oddity", a term that may not provoke quite as much umbrage as "vanity project". Technical merits are first rate for those considering a purchase.