Highly Overrated But Still Good

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Broken English closely captures the trouble faced by a girl in carrying on relationships & her desperation to find someone whom she can marry. The main theme of the story is to try looking for someone who can be your appropriate match or what inputs you need to give in a relationship to make it everlasting. May be the problem which a person is facing are not worth worrying or important. Well coming to the movie, Parker is beautiful, young & independent girl. She had been in many relationships which probably ended up with sex or she fell for someone who is already married ,in short she always end up picking a wrong match for her. What she exactly wanted was some guy who is reliable, caring & ready to be committed. But her continuous failure in relationships freaked her out until she found out that its not only true love that she was expecting from her life. It meant more than that. There are two aspect of relationships. For some people its not more than a casual affair but for others it may means a lot. So its all about picking up a right match for you. Otherwise on a serious note it may lead to frustrating consequences like feeling of failure & insecurity in life. This movie is very well handled in terms of acting and direction specifically. So at least the people who care about sensitive & mature topics should give it a try.

Women nowadays don't feel the need to connect with men on a marital plain. And that is pretty much how Nora Wilder (Parker Posey, FAY GRIM) feels her life turning out.Bad date after bad date, Nora leaps headlong upon every man she meets or is set up with (including one horrible blind date arranged by her mother, played by the estimable Gena Rowlands).From meeting movie stars to momma's boys, Nora is sure that she'll spend the rest of her life withering away, loveless and alone. Even her job at an upscale hotel seems headed toward nowheresville. But then she happens upon Julien (Melvil Poupaud), a visiting Frenchman with no reservations about relationships. Their dating rapidly escalates but each holds back their love for fear of losing themselves to the opposite sex.Funny moments occur as Julien's poor English enunciation turns mundane subjects into firecracker discussions. Nora's stress of dating someone she might actually grow to care about leads her to alcohol and her medicine cabinet, needing something to salve her anxiety about how much she's beginning to care for Julien.When Julien finally tells Nora that he has to go back to Paris, it is a hammer's blow to Nora's life. Julien begs her to come with him, but Nora has friends, family, and a job to worry about. So Julien leaves and gives her his phone number "just in case..." "Just in case" happens, as Nora flies with a friend to Paris and quickly learns that she's lost Julien's phone number. Unable to locate him ("His name is like John Smith in America"), she decides to simply enjoy herself while on vacation and scurries about Paris. But when it comes time to leave, she can't. She realizes that she's been staying in Paris only to see Julien again. She remains for a while longer but finally, regretfully, decides to return to the U.S. On her trip to the Paris airport, however, she discovers she's riding the train with Julien, and the two reconnect via happenstance and serendipity.Although schmaltzy and awkward in many places, BROKEN English has that quirky feel to it that makes many of its failings watchable. Parker Posey gives a powerful emotional performance as a woman in conflict with the times and her need to connect with someone meaningful. French actor Melvil Poupaud is handsome, a bit gruff, and just as strange as Parker Posey's character, which makes them play off each other exceptionally well.The pacing of the film is exceptionally slow, however, especially the first five minutes in which all we do is watch Parker Posey put on make-up and look in the mirror five-hundred times; something you should be prepared for. The pacing does pick up in places, but it can get tiresome watching the mundane for just as many minutes later on.

This film is a shallow treatise on the problems of locating love for a young woman in the city. The main character is self-centered, and yet seems to have no real interests. She is desperately looking for someone to love her in order to save her from herself. She is not really interested in other people, only in their ability to "love" her, even if they are assholes and total strangers. The movie takes the position that her attitude is normal, and in doing so misses an opportunity to be interesting. The movie fails to make an assessment about the existential problems of the character, or to question her myopic vision and lack of center and dignity. The film, like its characters, is a surface without a center, and ends up being mainstream, shallow, hollow, and sentimental. It's no wonder that's it's safe for audiences today, for it reinforces the popular idea that women are dependent on men for their happiness and to fill a hole or void. The film is indeed a fairy tale, for a woman who behaves like a depressed, mopey, self-hating dishrag all of the time would be very lucky to find a man to love her.

Parker Posey and a generally good cast struggle against an underdone script. You can sort of see what the writer and director intended, but it doesn't really come off. In spite of Parker's best efforts, and they are quite fine, this film meanders along on its surface. People suffer in affluent, superficial ways. There's lots of whining about alienation and loneliness. Yet no one has any observable problems that warrant their apparent dysfunction. It's hard to feel much affinity for the spoiled, self-indulgent female friends who complain about their fates in a somewhat muddled fashion. This is a story where character development is essential, but nothing of the sort arrives in time to redeem the unlikeable best friends whose personal travails should evoke interest and sympathy from the audience.