Claire Danes and Steve Martin

104 MINUTES | BOSTON COMMON + KENDALL SQUARE

In Anand Tucker’s adaptation of Steve Martin’s novella, relationships consist of power and intimacy in unequal measure. But Mirabelle (Claire Danes) doesn’t know that yet. A 20ish aspiring artist from Vermont in LA, she’s the kind of person, as Martin’s voiceover narrator points out, whose life needs a voiceover narrator. Bored at the glove counter at Saks, she meets Ray (Martin), who’s well-mannered, witty, rich, and much older. But there’s also Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), who’s ill-mannered, weird, indigent, and acts like a child. Who does she choose? The surprises here lie not in the plot but in the way it gets a laugh out of a mint, or salvages pathos from sentimentality, or sneaks its hard truths about love into a breezy fable. Schwartzman’s shtick lies somewhere between Woody Allen and Jerry Lewis, and Martin’s expression ranges from bemused to apologetic, but Danes’s performance, impeccable and touching, is the real deal.