BROKEN ENGLISH

Parker Posey is perpetually thirtysomething -- for many an age when reckless youth comes crashing into the realities of adulthood. Early in her career, Posey harnessed the dualities of mature worldly awareness and youthful arrogance and innocence to create characters with unique depth. She's grown more mature with age, but her sparkle is far from gone. Nothing captures this better than her performance in the new film from Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of independent cinema pioneer John Cassavetes. Posey stars as a woman straddling the worlds of the young and the mature who stupidly and consciously falls into bad relationships while pining for the supposed stability that comes with true love. She's at a resigned emotional end when a younger Frenchman briefly enters her life and shakes her to the core -- a cathartic upheaval that takes her from claustrophobic and stifling New York City to free and strange Paris. Director Cassavetes proves to be her father's daughter, navigating the unknowns of human relationships with nuance. Her directorial hand is simple but effective, allowing the actors to hold center court. This is a relief, because the narrative unfolds into the clichéd and contrived expositive corners of talky indiedom far too often. Broken English flies when its emotions take control, but its gaps are drowsy. Grade: B