Not only is Shopgirl a great movie featuring a Bill-Murray-like career turn for Steve Martin, the film's strengths are great enough to force me to reconsider other films that I've enjoyed. Shopgirl (from Martin's own adaptation of his novella) is a sweet and tender love story that eschews irony and sarcasm as well as treacly Hollywood sentimentality. Unlike other so-sincere films like Thumbsucker and Me and You and Everyone We Know (both of which I enjoyed greatly), Shopgirl refuses to rely on cutesy emo gimmickry—rather than dwelling on post-adolescent awkwardness or chronic pre-teen angst, Shopgirl shows that you can be heartfelt and funny while maintaining an intelligent, adult-level discourse.

The lovelier-than-ever Claire Danes plays Mirabelle, a lonely Vermont girl who sells couture gloves at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Mirabelle becomes romantically entangled with two men who couldn't be more different: There's Jeremy, played by Jason Schwartzman, whose retarded overacting is the only flat note in the movie (he basically plays Jack Black in School of Rock, or any other sloppy slacker from Hollywood history), and there's Ray, portrayed by Martin in a role that'll hopefully launch a major revival for the actor (provided he steers clear of Queen Latifah for a while). Ray's a cultured millionaire who woos Mirabelle, but erects emotional fences that keep her love at bay. Jeremy, on the other hand, loves Mirabelle to death, but he's an unreliable doofus with no direction in life. Throughout most of Shopgirl, Mirabelle is involved with sophisticated Ray, whose Pygmalion-like charms entrance our young artistic glove retailer while Jeremy undergoes an amusing process of self-discovery while he's on the road with a touring rock band (played, under a different moniker, by real-life touring rock band My Morning Jacket). The film focuses on the trio's emotional transactions—the bartering, give-and-take nature of romance.

Beautifully directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie), Shopgirl is a jewel box of a love story, shot with serenely mindblowing cinematography by Peter Suschitzky. Comparisons are already flying between Shopgirl and Lost in Translation, which are fair enough, I suppose. But spiritually, Shopgirl is closer to Martin's 1991 film L.A. Story—a love song to both Martin's humane affection for Los Angeles, and to love itself.