Broken EnglishA safe ticket seller  July 3,
2007 3:00:10 PM
BROKEN ENGLISH: A Woman Under the Influence it’s not.
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John Cassavetes’s kids Nick and Zoe might not shape independent cinema the way their father did, but they’ll probably sell more tickets. In her debut feature, Zoe turns to the safety of the chick flick, with the ever watchable Parker Posey as Nora, a 30ish career woman in New York who can’t figure out why she’s not married like her friends or why she always has bad luck with men. Possible explanations include drinking, pills, low self-esteem, and her inability to resist jumping into bed on the first date — so when she holds off on sleeping with Julien (Melvil Poupaud), a French guy in a fedora, for almost two days, it seems he’s the one. With mom (Zoe’s real-life mom, Gena Rowlands) offering banal advice and noting “how hard it is for a woman today,” you feel more confident that things are going to end okay than you would while watching, say, A Woman Under the Influence. Drea de Matteo excels as the unhappily married best friend.
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