Broken English.

"Zoe Cassavetes's Broken English is really just a Whit Stillman-like rendering of an episode of Sex and the City (imagine if Carrie Bradshaw and the gang went to Film Forum instead of Cafeteria), but every time it lets [Parker] Posey take center stage with her inimitable range of expression (which in this case, is more often for dramatic effect), you're convinced you're watching something more than a chick flick without KT Tunstall tunes," writes Jason Clark at Slant.

Updated through 6/25.

"There are key similarities between Nora's foggy neurosis and the characters Posey recently played in Fay Grim and The Oh in Ohio; if urban female confusion is the new suburban male confusion, surely Posey's lost and wary eyes are the face of that angst," writes Michelle Orange in the Voice. And she's also not the only one to mention that "in paraphrasing the final lines of [Before Sunset] for Broken English's closing scene, the director only highlights how her film suffers in comparison."

Posey's "performance just about makes up for a leap-of-faith ending that is hard to embrace," writes Nicolas Rapold for the L Magazine.

Robert Cashill finds it "a tough-love charmer, with Posey's finest performance to date."

Earlier: "Sundance. Broken English."

Updates, 6/21: Susan King talks with Cassavetes for the Los Angeles Times.

"This is an itchily neurotic film that fights its genre to a draw, with a female protagonist so steeped in pharmaceutical despair she's one short step away from a Jacqueline Susann novel or an early Pedro Almodóvar movie," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Broken English is interesting exactly to the extent that Cassavetes can't control it; I doubt she realizes how repellent and terrifying her main character really is, or that the pair of female best friends depicted in the film can't stand each other and just haven't realized it yet."

Updates, 6/22: Broken English is a "textbook example of an Indiewood film: a Hollywood fantasy wrapped in plain brown paper," writes Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times. "It departs from the studio-financed romantic-comedy template in just one, unfortunately fatal respect: it makes a point of pride out of rejecting cliché, then swoons into its embrace."

"A simple, empathetic script and calm, assured directing display a level of emotional honesty and character development that's confoundingly rare these days, especially when it comes to female characters," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

"The surprising part is how ridiculously pleasing Broken English manages to be," writes Marcy Dermansky. "The first third and then the last fairly sing: funny, smart, well-paced, with Parker Posey at her finest."

Update, 6/25: For IFC News, Aaron Hillis talks with Zoe Cassavetes: "[I]t was so nice to have Gena Rowlands in the movie, but it was also nice to share that experience with my mom. I talked to my brother a lot, and he said, 'You gotta call her Gena. It's not going to go down well if you call her Mom.'"

Posted by dwhudson at June 20, 2007 1:03 PM