Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Shopgirl’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

Love is and will always be an important part of our lives. It simply has to be. We need the positivity of love, we need the strength that it gives us, and we need the feeling of it filling up our souls. It may not always be limited to another human being, since we do things we love, and we eat things we love but in the end the love that matters most comes from the people who tell us how much they need us.  

Yet a grand question we have all had to ask ourselves at some point or another, is how far would we go for love? There are sacrifices that must be made, hardships to endure and bleak days where it seems like the fight for it isn't quite worth the effort, yet we often press on and try to do whatever we must for love because we understand the power it holds over us, since it is one of the few things in this universe that can provide us with complete and utter bliss.

At the same time however, there are those of us out there, searching for that perfect someone that fit a concept or a mold. Since love is something we read about, learn about and romanticize about...there are preconceived notions of what we want out of it and it is the dangers that come with opening ourselves up to other people that we think fit a preconceived notion that is the focus of the beautiful and haunting motion picture, Shopgirl. ​

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Mirabelle Buttersfield is searching for what she feels is the one great thing missing in her life...love. But being a shy girl living in the massive city that is Los Angeles, she is just another face in the crowd. She goes to work, she pays her bills and lives her life but there is no one to come home to. But chance encounters with a romantically inept man named Jeremy and a suave older man named Ray Porter will change her life forever since each of them will inadvertently help her discover exactly what she needs in life, and what love is really all about.
 
What caught me off guard about this film at first, was how completely unconventional it was. While this film is touted as a romantic comedy and yes, there are laughs to be found here, the romantic side of the story is like nothing you've ever seen on the silver screen before, since it gives us a raw look at modern dating by way of some colorful characters. There's Jeremy who is completely clueless and boorish and the least romantic man on the planet and then there is Ray Porter, who quite frankly is equally as unromantic for reasons that I don't want to reveal without you seeing the film but needless to say, it is his B.S. that Mirabelle falls for.  

Based on the novella of the same name, Shopgirl is a compelling love story because it does challenge all the things I mentioned before. Mirabelle is the personification of all of our darkest hours when it comes to love. That place we have all been where we wonder if we are worthy of another human being's attention or if we are even remotely destined to find true love, and of course the biggest question of all...how far will we go to feel complete in matters of love. It makes her journey all the more compelling and all the more tragic when we see how hard she falls for Ray Porter before later discovering what Ray is really all about. 

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