Romance & Cigarettes is a 2005 American musical romantic comedy film written and directed by John Turturro. The film features a group of actors, including James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Barbara Sukowa, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, and Amy Sedaris. The film was nominated for a Golden Lion at the 2005 Venice Film Festival.
Plot
In the early 1980s in New York, Kitty Kane, a woman who sews clothes for a living, discovers that her husband, Nick Murder, a construction worker, has been cheating on her after finding a poem he wrote to another woman. This discovery causes a conflict between Kitty and Nick and creates big problems for their family and the close-knit neighborhood. Through musical numbers, characters explore ideas about love, sex, and personal desires, showing their fears and hopes.
At the same time, Kitty’s daughter, Baby, who plays guitar and sings in a local rock band, begins a relationship with a boy named Chetty Jr., who calls himself "Fryburg." When Baby tells Kitty she plans to marry Fryburg, Kitty stops her, worried Baby’s life will mirror her own unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, Nick continues his relationship with Tula, a younger woman from Manchester who works in a lingerie store. Tula meets Nick after seeing him work without a shirt and encourages him to get a circumcision, which he agrees to after talking to his friend Angelo, who often discusses relationships and sex.
Trying to heal from Nick’s affair, Kitty returns to church, where she reconnects with her old priest and joins the choir. To find Tula, Kitty asks her cousin Bo, a man obsessed with rockabilly music and paranoid about his past, for help. Bo claims he killed his wife, Delilah, but she is actually alive. Together, they find Tula at her job, and the two women fight physically. Soon after, Nick becomes very sick from eating too much licorice and is taken to the hospital. There, his mother and Angelo confront him about his actions. Nick’s mother tells him he is following in the footsteps of his unfaithful father and grandfather, who are now remembered as dishonest people. Feeling ashamed, Nick ends his affair with Tula and tries to reconcile with Kitty, who allows him to stay in the house but does not forgive him.
Baby ends her relationship with Fryburg after realizing he lacks goals and would not be a good partner. Later, Nick fights with a neighbor who piles snow on their lawn. The neighbor, who is younger and stronger, beats Nick badly, but Kitty stops the fight, starting a slow reconciliation. Soon after, Nick is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, caused by years of smoking. Distraught, he confesses his affair and bad behavior to Kitty’s priest. Kitty agrees to care for him as he dies but says she will never have sex with him again. As Nick’s health worsens, he is hospitalized. One night, Kitty visits him, and Nick writes her a poem expressing his love and gratitude. Shortly after, Nick dies, leaving Kitty to deal with her complicated feelings for him and think about her future.
Production and release
The film was produced by a New York production company called GreeneStreet Films. It received financial support from United Artists, the Coen brothers, and Mel Gibson's company, Icon Entertainment International.
Release
The movie Romance & Cigarettes had its first showing at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2005. It was then shown at the Toronto International Film Festival one week later.
The film was first released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on March 24, 2006. Soon after, it was released in several other European countries during March and April of the same year. In the United States, the film was released in a limited number of theaters on September 7, 2007. The director, John Turturro, handled the U.S. distribution himself, even though it was originally planned for United Artists to manage this task.
United Artists still holds a financial ownership share in the film, but the main rights to the movie are now owned by Icon.
Reception
The movie Romance & Cigarettes has received mixed reviews from critics. On the website Rotten Tomatoes, 53% of 59 critics gave positive reviews, with an average score of 5.6 out of 10. The website’s summary states that the film tries to be fun and modern but is too disorganized and inconsistent to succeed. Metacritic, which calculates scores using a weighted average, gave the film a score of 55 out of 100 based on 22 critics. This score indicates that the reviews were mixed or average.
On April 27, 2008, the film was shown at the 10th Annual Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois. Ebertfest is a film festival hosted by Roger Ebert near his hometown of Urbana, Illinois. Aida Turturro and Tricia Brouk were scheduled to attend the event. Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star rating out of four.