Shopgirl

Steve Martin has been that elegant, silver-haired gentlemen with the charming wit for some time now. Sure, it's been a while since the Father of the Bride films, and in recent years his fiction writing has been the source of his best material, but he's still got a rabid fan base and an undeniable screen persona. Shopgirl, his first film since 2003's Cheaper by the Dozen, features Martin playing dual roles, both lead actor and screenwriter. Based on a novella of the same name, the movie tells the story of Mirabelle (Claire Danes), a 20-something clerk at Saks with skin pale as milk who finds herself caught between the young and clumsy yet earnest Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) and the rich and elegant touch of Ray Porter (Martin).

All three leads are nearly flawless, Danes in particular. In the novella, Mirabelle is constantly described as attractive, but not in a traditional sense, and in that sense, Danes is cast perfectly. She captures the delicacy in Mirabelle that is so attractive to both ends of the age spectrum-the intense need for connection that Martin's pen insists lies within the modern single female.

Martin plays a role quickly becoming popular in borderline-mainstream cinema: the single, white male with a gaggle of women and wealth of a mysterious source, but he plays it with such intense knowledge of his place within the story that it's impossible to pinpoint a misstep. Schwartzman is, as usual, appealing, despite his character's shortcomings (at one point, he offers to split the cost of a date with Mirabelle, then asks if he may "borrow two dollars").

Director Anand Tucker does an excellent job creating just the right atmosphere for Mirabelle to fall softly into the cushy luxury of Porter's bachelor pad or the rickety collegiate studio that acts as her home. It's a tough story to tell, requiring a consistently deft touch and an ability to cut scenes at the exact moment they become too overbearing, but Tucker manages to avoid most of the problems that tend to kill this type of bildungsroman.

Shopgirl is a success where it likely should have been a failure: accurately translating Martin's excellent though sparse prose to a filmic language that so easily gobbles up soft, tender stories like this and spits them out with the name Jerry Bruckheimer attached in big, bold letters.