I made a long overdue trip down to BookMonster in Santa Monica this weekend. It’s a used Bookstore that has one aisle of DVD’s, usually priced for only a couple bucks. Typically I spent like 20 bucks on a stack of maybe a dozen discs. For this trip, I budgeted twice that since I wanted some actual books too. But then I found myself indiscriminately throwing 1, 2, and 3 dollar movies into my little basket. Ended up spending 90 on about 30 movies and 3 books. Guess Black Friday came early.
I separated a stack of high priority movies to try to get thru over the long weekend (although I lost most of one day to assembling Ikea furniture). Among those, Enough Said. One of James Gandolfini’s final films. I’d only just watched The Sopranos last year, so I’d previously not had any interest in a romance (gag) he starred in. I haven’t been able to get it outta my head in the two days since I’ve seen it.
Gandolfini stars with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in this sweet film about romance at an older age. Both of them are divorced, facing an upcoming empty nest with their children planning to leave for college. I’ll keep the complication to myself because I didn’t see it coming, and thought it was quite clever (even if it ventured into that awkward territory where you know it’s gonna blow up in everyone’s faces). This movie also gets bonus points for starring not only one goddess (Julia) but also Catherine Keener and Toni Colette.
People who knew him consider this role to have been the most like Gandolfini’s actual personality. Watching this, I fell completely completely in love with him. His character was such a loveable dork, so funny and tender. His chemistry with Julia was absolutely sweet and just radiated off the screen. The way he put his arm around her and pulled her in for their first kiss, I just wanted to get lost in that big bear hug. He also gets major bonus points for how respectful he was. He asked a mutual friend to ask permission for her number, and asked her before that kiss. It makes it all the sadder that we lost him so soon, I would have loved to see more sensitive anti-Soprano roles from him.