ENOUGH SAID: JAMES GANDOLFINI AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2013

Although Enough Said is nominally the story of a single-mom masseuse in LA trying to have a relationship, and it sometimes fails to make the most of the farcical elements it's set up, what makes it work is the exceptional performance of James Gandolfini as the male lead, in his penultimate film role.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, whose daughter is about to go 'back East' to college, and whose career as a masseuse is an almost endless parade of clients who have bad breath, natter on inanely about their problems, or who seem oblivious to Eva's own problems, like having to lug her massage table up a flight of steep stairs. At a party she meets Albert (Gandolfini—whose character appears to have been given that name solely so Eva can later make a 'Fat Albert' joke) and they get a small sense of attraction when admitting neither finds anyone at the party attractive. Of course, romance blossoms, but Eva is besieged by doubts, mostly because Albert is overweight, messy, and doesn't seem to worry about that. His own daughter, also headed east to college, is obnoxious. But what makes it worse is Eva's newest client, another product of the fateful party, Marianne (Catharine Keener): a poet whose tastes Eva admires and who is constantly disparaging about her overweight ex-husband.

Who of course turns out to be Albert.

Although it is funny, and often written very cleverly, in one sense, Nicole Holofcener's film seems to back away from being the comedy it cries out to be—as if its chops as an 'independent' movie would be at risk were it not to highlight the suburban LA malaise while it sets up a Feydeau farce. In some ways, this is a movie about people who are uncomfortable with themselves, and their roles; people driven by a need to have something else, something better. This is illustrated best by Eva's friend Sarah (Toni Collette), who's dissatisfied with everything from her husband Will (Ben Falcone) with whom she is constantly bickering and comparing to an imaginary new man, to the way the furniture's arranged, to the disorder of their maid Cathy (Anjeleh Johnson-Reyes), whose shortcomings are mostly Sarah's. Her inability to fire Cathy, based on an literal inability to find what she wants because she's so messy also hints at an ominous LA perception: earlier in the film Eva yells at one of her daughter's friends to 'pick up your trash...you're not British!'

This sort of dissection of the mores of LA, the needy daughter whose mother wants to dress like a teen, and whose need pushes Eva's own daughter into the background, to a goodbye dinner for Eva's daughter with her ex and his new wife, and especially in Catharine Keener and her relentless attack on Albert coupled with a sort f lonely name-dropping of her own, is built around self-centeredness, and around perception being mistaken for reality.

The only exception to that, of course, the only character who actually seems comfortable in himself, is Gandolfini, who may have walked into LA from New Jersey just as surely as if this were an episode of the Sopranos. In fact, what made Tony Soprano work was in large part Gandolfini's innate humour and likeability, something hinged to the vulnerability of the less attractive fat man. In that sense, Albert is Tony Soprano without the threat of violence, without the simmering rage underneath. He understands who he is, and if not always happy with his loneliness, can live with that. It has always puzzled me why this wasn't spotted in Gandolfini, after playing Bear in Get Shorty, which was 1995 after all. Instead, when he started getting film roles they were in the George Dzunda class, ignoring his comic potential.

This is important because for most of the film he plays straight man for Louis-Dreyfus, who is far more a television, small-screen, actor than he is. She spends much of the film acting with her teeth, and as if aware of the limitation, Holofcener shoots much of it in extreme close-up, as if we were watching a TV screen. Louis-Dreyfus is good when she has to be controlled, mostly at the moment of breakdown, but it's Gandolfini who reveals big emotions through small gestures, who manages to project the inward, which is the big screen way. His ability helps Louis-Dreyfus find a bit of the screwball touch, and stops her from spinning madly out of control with toothy smiles, which may indicate Eva's uncertainties, and do whenever Gandolfini is on screen with them.

The real moments the film works are not in ensemble moaning, but when it is dealing with the personal, the way love grows, then dissipates, how , which is external, can evaporate if you don't find the kindness which is internal. I so wanted this movie to have an unhappy ending, and there are moments when it could have—and that would have given it independent street cred out the wazoo. But Gandolfini had made us feel Albert deserves better, and Jwe know, in the end, he will be himself. This film is dedicated to him, and well it should be, because it turns a lightweight comedy into something memorable.

Enough Said plays at the London Film Festival 12,13, 14 October, before release from Fox Searchlight.

JAMES GANDOLFINI AND TONY SOPRANO

James Gandolfini wasn't just cast perfectly as Tony Soprano, he inhabited the role. He was Jersey-born, Rutgers-educated, New York-trained. Those New Yorkish roots were true of most of the Sopranos cast--born in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Mount Vernon, Hoboken. Dominic Chiasnese, Tony Sirico, Vincent Pastore, David Proval, Jerry Adler, even Frank Vincent, all felt real as Jersey mobsters. Gandolfini worked as Tony because he felt real too, but there was something else there, an extra bit of shadow, an ingratiating appearance, that meant the audience could believe in him both as a gangster and as David Chace's character.

Tony could be a softie and mean it, and then order Big Pussy killed. He could then dream-talk to Pussy, through the mouth of a dead fish, and it was believable. The show was based on Tony's being just slightly off the mould.  He once called himself a 260-pound Woody Allen, and that's what came through as Tony. Plus, although there are any number of Wesleyan references in the show, I always figured it was Gandolfini who got Mangenius into Arties for dinner.

Where this worked best was possibily with Nancy Marchand, as his mother. Marchand (born in Buffalo, which might as well be Wisconsin in New York terms) was Tony's Italian Jewish mother, and if their interaction sometimes veered between classic Greek drama and every sitcom on TV since the 1950s, she had the same kind of slightly hidden special thing that brought out the real Tony. It works with Edie Falco (another New Yorker) partly because she works to escape the mould as well.

I still think Gandolfini's role as Bear in Get Shorty may be his best (though lots of people like Virgil, in True Romance, which may have got him cast as Bear anyway). It's fascinating to see how far he came from that part to the Sopranos, but also how he didn't go much farther. He's excellent in any number of films, but it's always in the same sort of supporting role, as a blustry figure of crude authority: the CIA boss in Zero Dark 30, the general in In The Loop (playing straight man for a Brit, no less); the mayor (and best thing) in the remake of Taking of Pelham 123 (he made Travolta look handsomer in five different movies--supposedly Gandolfini was voted best-looking in his high school class, which really lets you know all you need to about New Jersey); and as Robert Redford's punching bag in The Last Castle. He relies the same mannerisms he employed as Tony, the twinkle in ther eye, the look of surprise, the knowing tilt, but on the big screen they were less effective. It was as the anti-hero on the small screen that Gandolfini worked best.


It made a huge impact. The Sopranos marks a turning point in TV drama--the creative energy moved to cable TV, and deeper darker series and more ambitious films were the result. Without the success of the Sopranos there might not be a Mad Men, or Justified, or Breaking Bad. On the other hand, there might not be a Lilyhammer either. But Gandolfini didn't let it rest there. He was a producer on three HBO films; as executive producer and presenter of Alive Day Memories, about soldiers returning from Iraq, as producer of the Prism-award winning War Torn, about the psychological damage of combat, and again as a producer on Philip Kaufman's Hemingway and Gellhorn, with Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen epically miscast as ill-matched writers.

If you can find it, go back and watch Showtime's 1997 made for TV version of 12 Angry Men (which went back to Reginald Rose's original teleplay). It's a good cast, with Jack Lemmon in the Fonda role, George C Scott as Lee J Cobb, Ossie Davis, Hume Cronyn, William Petersen, and Gandolfini as Juror 6 -- the Edward Binns part in the movie made 40 years before. He nails it, and he moe than holds his own in an excellent cast. And it reminds you of what talent in New York is like. We saw the cast of the Sopranos in Scorsese films, in episodes of Law & Order, maybe in theatre if we were lucky enough. But read this article from the 1988 New York Times, about when Gandolfini was doing the thing generations of actors had done before him. He found his unlikely success, playing a Jersey character, and every time you heard that music play, and watch Tony Soprano and his car and cigar drive up to that exit, count yourself lucky you are watching. RIP.