Zoe Cassavetes' first feature film, "Broken English," hovers expertly between the realm of total credibility and urban fairy-tale for chicks, the kind of story you're likely to hear from a girlfriend over lunch about someone in her office who hasn't had a date in two whole years and wham! She met THE ONE! Ta-da! It almost sounds too good to be true, but then who wants to check over the facts? The important thing is that such stuff happens. Energized and uplifted, you finish lunch and go back to work.
Cassavetes, now being heralded as the next Sofia Coppola (the production notes say they're close friends) comes from true-blue stock in American cinema; the daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, who grew up calling Ben Gazzara "Uncle Ben." One Sunday when she was about 3, she went down to the living room to watch cartoons and there her parents were, in the midst of making "Woman Under the Influence" (1974), Cassavetes' powerful, painfully honest work about madness and love.
Like her dad and brother Nick (also a director), Cassavetes knows how to deploy the talents of her mother and trusted friends — and "Broken English" has that relaxed, comfortable buzz of something that was made among loved ones. It wasn't made in the Cassavetes living room, but it sure could have been.