Going Shopping
''Going Shopping," the new Henry Jaglom picture, is occasionally tedious -- like being in the waiting area of a clothing store while a wife, girlfriend, or mistress tries on everything with the understanding that you'll be paying.
Yet there are more unpleasant ways to misplace 106 minutes than sitting through this film, about a fashion designer named Holly (Victoria Foyt) who has one weekend to save her popular Los Angeles boutique and cafe from closing.
Holly's shop, named Holly G after the heroine of ''Breakfast at Tiffany's," specializes in kooky off-the-rack tops and dresses that appeal to rich Southern California women who'd rather look like they live in Marin County. Holly is a dubious businesswoman, slashing prices in half to make customers happy. When her sleazy boyfriend, Adam (Bruce Davison), makes some terrible investments with the store's earnings, she's forced to come up with the money for three months' back rent.
If she were in a Broadway musical, she'd sing about it. Here, Holly frets, while moving with her appalled teenage daughter, Coco (Mae Whitman), out of Adam's and into the sewing quarters above the store. Holly runs through various schemes to raise the money, deciding to have a sale (30 percent off everything!). The movie also tosses her a new love interest, sweetly played by Rob Morrow, and he and Foyt share such an easy, sincere rapport that you wish the movie would settle here.
Instead, Jaglom, who wrote ''Going Shopping" with Foyt, his wife and writing partner of more than a decade, insists on inflating the film into musings on the highs and lows of shopping. Plopped amid the tale are women's pseudo-documentary confessions of clothing addictions: fitting-room nightmares, shoes, spirituality, and the loss of self in the search for the perfect look. Says one woman to the camera, ''I think I buy a feeling more than an outfit."
Like a lot of Jaglom's movies, ''Going Shopping" is a shapeless trifle that might have been more. His earlier films, such as ''Eating" (1990), ''Venice/Venice" (1992), ''Babyfever" (1994), and ''Last Summer in the Hamptons" (1995), leave you groaning at the narcissism and indulgence behind them.
Despite his lack of ostensible skill, Jaglom is nonetheless an interesting filmmaker, if only through perseverance. (He's been doing the same movie for almost 35 years.) And ''Going Shopping" has charm.
The movie's self-centeredness is ingratiating -- as ingratiating as self-centeredness can be. You're never completely disarmed by Holly, her pretentious little shop, or the tidy, soapy, orgiastic resolution of her plight. But after an hour, the urge to slap some sense into her recedes. Foyt wins you over. So does a scarily well-upholstered Lee Grant, as Holly's reckless mother, who practically steals the movie with a dithering last-minute revelation.
The trouble with ''Going Shopping" is that it's clogged with personalities and styles that don't congeal. In the 1930s or 1940s, Jaglom's method might have been less irritating. His movies have the high-strung single-mindedness of women's pictures of that era. But Jaglom's work speaks to an extremely specific type of woman, and she's probably too busy getting her brows lifted to go see it.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
Video
