About 10 minutes into John Turturro's "Romance & Cigarettes," just when you're thinking you know what kind of movie it's going to be - grubby Queens comedy/drama about adulterous Nick Murder (James Gandolfini), sexy bit-on-the-side (Kate Winslet), and vengeful wife (Susan Sarandon) - it takes a delirious turn into something unexpected, weird, and right. Nick and his wife have just had a hilarious, awful argument over her discovery of his affair. Finally he walks out the door. He stands on the porch and looks around. And then he starts to sing. He sings "Lonely Is a Man Without Love," and he means it. Not only that - a chorus of his blue-collar neighbors soon join in, putting down their garbage cans and raising their welder's masks to help him belt out his heartbreak. If they camped it up, it wouldn't work. But it's completely straight-faced, and it lasts less than two minutes. And when it's over, you're laughing and sad at the same time, and you know that, wherever this movie is going, it won't be where you expected. But you're eager to go along.

LOUISE KENNEDY