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'Shopgirl': Buyer beware

"Shopgirl," a dramedy about how people who shouldn't be together try and fail to do so anyway, is a beautifully wistful and inadvertently creepy movie.

Self-adapted from Steve Martin's slim, waifish, quite pleasant novella, the movie is about slim, waifish, quite pleasant Mirabelle (Claire Danes), a transplanted Vermonter squandering her days at Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles, trying to sell fancy gloves and failing because nobody buys them anymore. She lets herself get picked up in a coin laundry by a goofball slacker named Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman, who continues to impress), despite the fact that the dude has to bum quarters off of her to finish drying his tightie whities. The hookup is awkward and handled with a deft comic touch. (Good thing Mirabelle has only one cat as opposed to the two she had in the book.)

Touchstone Pictures 'Shopgirl' 2 out of 5 stars Director: Anand Tucker Starring: Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Steve Martin, Frances Conroy, Sam Bottoms Run time: 104 minutes Release date: Oct. 21, 2005 Rating: R for some sexual content and brief language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Shopgirl'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Along comes Ray Porter (Martin, who's less than fully convincing considering he wrote the part for himself). Ray is older, courtly, wealthy, generous, unable to get comfortable on Mirabelle's living-room futon, let alone in her life.

Ray makes plain he's not interested in a relationship and starts throwing dough at the lass: There are dinners in Beverly Hills restaurants, plane tickets to New York, fancy dresses and the surprise relief of almost $40,000 in student loan debt. Guided by the steady, check-writing hand of Ray, our pensive Mirabelle blossoms like an orchid in a hothouse.

But. Um. Does this strike anyone as a little transactional? When Ray announces his motivation, essentially vows to treat Mirabelle shabbily and does just that, and Mirabelle enjoys the expensive raiments, are we watching a movie about a love unfulfilled or a deal consummated? I'm not so naive to suggest that every relationship doesn't include a bit of emotional calculus, factoring in protection, security, money, desirability of the partner as breeding stock, whatever. Are we to believe Mirabelle falls for Ray despite the very specific terms and conditions he's set? It's quite plain he's only willing and able to sweep her off but one of her feet.

To her vast credit, Danes almost makes us believe. Her Mirabelle yearns for the storybook myth, but she's just old enough to begin practicing the corrosive art of compromise, putting herself on the road to being every bit as disappointed as Ray is at his age. At times, cinematographer Peter J. Suschitzky shows Mirabelle in a fine mist of light, as if she's one of those baubles under glass at Saks, but — with the exception of one luxuriant, Rodin-like shot — Suschitsky and director Anand Tucker ("Hillary and Jackie") strive not for total perfection but for a look that makes the viewer linger, as suitors are described as doing in the book.

Speaking of suitors, is it at long last time to declare a moratorium on pairing actors who recall the Teapot Dome Scandal with actresses born after the Sex Pistols broke up? A woman Claire Danes' age has no business at Steve Martin's house unless she's dropping off Meals on Wheels. I keep thinking of a single image of Martin guiding Danes through a crowded room. The gesture is supposed to convey chivalry but reveals something else. It's Martin's papery old hand on the small of Danes' lovely, bought and paid-for back.

In terms of quiet tone and generational chasm, the movie bears nodding similarity to "Lost in Translation," which was both funnier and deeply melancholy. In its effort to convey the ruin that can come to those who care for us when we try to protect ourselves, in the poignance in the knowledge that things will be left unsaid until it's too late, "Shopgirl" tries to sell itself as a one-of-a-kind item. In fact, it's damaged goods.