Amazon.com
"Before I met you, I thought I was in trouble," says moneyed museum worker Minnie (Gena Rowlands) to longhaired car park attendant Seymour (Seymour Cassel) over a hot dog and a coffee. Such is the basis of true love in
Minnie and Moskowitz, a shaggy, unusually romantic comedy that is nonetheless pure John Cassavetes. After a long introductory sequence in which each character fills the screen with the rhythm of their respective lives, they meet when Seymour rescues Minnie from a blind date gone hopelessly bad. Minnie and Seymour have almost nothing in common--he's a talkative, spontaneous goof with quicksilver emotions, a dead-end job, and little ambition, she's a shy, insecure but sincere upper-class single in an abusive affair with a married man (an uncredited Cassavetes, insidiously charming and cruelly bullying). But they are both lonely romantics with a love of Bogart movies. As in most of Cassavetes's work, the script is less a story than a string of dramatic engagements colored with the quirks and emotional impulses of its characters, and he takes his time exploring the nooks and crannies of the volatile relationship. But amidst the shouting matches and frenzied fights are moments of quiet intimacy, and it turns into the most hopeful portrait of romantic love in the Cassavetes canon, complete with a sunny, uncharacteristically happy home movie ending.
--Sean Axmaker
