Broken English: Critic Reviews

The tour of Manhattan and Paris is fun in a privileged Sex and the City way, but the wish-fulfillment content is awfully flimsy in this debut from writer-director Zoe Cassavetes.

The low-key comedy Broken English is a textbook example of an Indiewood film: a Hollywood fantasy wrapped in plain brown paper.

A welcome chance to see Posey at her flighty, edgy best. Is there an actress alive better able to convey the neuroses and self-doubts of the typical over-educated, under-challenged American woman?

Broken English is a conventional New York-lonely hearts story made watchable by one element and one element only: Parker Posey.

The film devolves into stilted-foreigner scenarios and self-help platitudes.

The director doesn't have the confidence to veer too far from the norm. Her touchingly quirky screenplay eventually turns into a disappointingly conventional fairy tale.

Cassavetes supplies no easy answers or easy laughs, forgoing romantic-comedy beats in respect for Nora's desperation. Call this confection a romantic-dramedy with humor on wry.

The filmmaking is forgettable, with an awkward script strewn with too many off-key notes.

Broken English establishes a sympathetic character, gets Parker Posey to make her real, and then grinds her in the gears of a plot we cannot believe.

A promising first film with moments exceeding that promise.

How Posey's neurotic, self-destructive heroine finds her way to healing is the core of this generous film, whose moral is that happiness can't begin unless you're open to its possibility.

As a director, Cassavetes is a keen observer of character and social interaction.

Although it's conventionally filmed and rather flat looking, the first dramatic feature written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes displays a good deal of her father John's appreciation for unembellished honesty.

...there's a resolutely indie spirit at work here that keeps things interesting even when they shouldn't be.

Though there's little unfamiliar here, pic's tipping the scales more toward latent-depression drama and away from typical romcom situation gags (the humor here is more offhand) makes it seem truer to life than many similar exercises.

Posey is a delight throughout, and Zoe Cassavetes is clearly a filmmaker to watch.

A likable but wan romance.

Despite its schizophrenic nature and often disagreeable characteristics, Broken English has flashes of something. You might say it has an integrity of purpose, if not of execution.

Casavetes tells her tale, but it's one we've already seen, and she doesn't bring much that's new or fresh to the narrative.

The always-riveting and criminally underused Posey gives a beautifully calibrated performance, possibly her most realized and multidimensional to date.

Broken English surprised me all around: I didn't expect to be particularly impressed with it, and instead it turns out to be not only one of my favorite films I've see this year, but it will probably earn a spot in the all-time annals for me.

Posey's admirers will experience a sensual intoxication that fans always experience when their film goddesses are at their very best.

This isn't the best independent film we've seen starring Miss Posey, but she is the reason this one works.