Film

Romance & Cigarettes

Name: Romance & Cigarettes
Genre: Comedy, Music, Romance
Released: 2006
Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale

A wildly theatrical 2006 musical-comedy about infidelity, family, and working-class New York. John Turturro directs like he's making a fever dream: characters burst into song, the colour palette swings between stark and vivid, nothing feels quite real. It's funny, crude, sincere, and utterly unconcerned with your comfort. For people who want something that doesn't fit any box.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like bawdy, big-hearted musicals where characters express themselves by bursting into familiar songs, and you don't mind your romance messy and a little vulgar.

Skip it if you want a tidy, polished musical; the singing is rough, unpolished and sometimes deliberately garish, and the crude humor can wear thin over 105 minutes.

What it asks of you: A loud, sprawling shape with overlapping subplots, emotions played broad, and a tone that lurches from sordid to sentimental without much warning.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece about longing and desire, told through sumptuous colour and restraint. Like Romance & Cigarettes, it finds the poetry in infidelity and heartbreak, but achieves it through silence instead of song. A spiritual cousin.

But Wordless and glacially paced. If you need plot momentum or dialogue to hold your hand, you'll find it glacial and frustrating.

Pennies from Heaven1981

Steve Martin in a Depression-era drama where characters spontaneously dance to period songs. The DNA is obvious: real suffering punctured by euphoric musical breaks that feel jarring and true. A genuine heartbreaker.

But The tonal whiplash will exhaust some viewers. It's also relentlessly bleak underneath the spectacle.

The Last Waltz1978

Martin Scorsese directing The Band's final concert, filmed with operatic grandeur. It understands that rock and roll and working-class life are the same thing—survival and transcendence packed together.

But More concert film than narrative. If you need story structure, this is a mood piece masquerading as documentation.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Romance & Cigarettes

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Dancer in the Dark2000

Both use musical numbers as emotional breakthrough rather than spectacle—the moment when the character's interior world becomes unbearable, so they sing. Both are about bodies in distress.

Lars von Trier's musical tragedy about a woman working multiple jobs while slowly going blind, built around Björk singing in the key moments. It does exactly what Romance & Cigarettes does—explodes into song when realism fails—but it's devastating. Real suffering married to beauty and rage.

But Punishing. The ending is genuinely traumatic. Von Trier is sadistic about his characters' pain, and if you're not prepared for that, you'll feel manipulated and hurt.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Charlie Kaufman's baroque, exhausting dive into creation, failure, and self-destruction. Like Turturro's film, it's maximalist and formally reckless, treating the screen as a place where logic breaks down in the name of feeling.

But Bewilderingly complicated and bleak. Some will find it self-indulgent and draining rather than moving.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazer's alien-invasion film that feels more like experimental art than science fiction. Scarlett Johansson in a film that doesn't explain itself, trusts mood and strangeness over narrative clarity.

But Almost no dialogue. Long, hypnotic takes that ask enormous patience. Actively hostile to conventional pleasure.

The King of Comedy1982

Scorsese's strangest film: Robert De Niro as a delusional nobody orbiting celebrity. Dark, uncomfortable, morally queasy. It has the same New York grit and the same willingness to make you squirm.

But Deeply unfunny to many people. The humiliation is real and sustained, not defanged by charm.

After Hours1985

Scorsese again, but this time a fever dream: Griffin Dunne through a nightmarish SoHo where logic evaporates. Surreal, comedic, nightmarish. It understands that New York can feel like a hallucination.

But Genuinely nasty and queasy. The comedy is very dark and some sexual violence is played ambiguously.

Liar's Dice2013

Biyi Bandele's adaptation of a play about infidelity and marriage. Tense, theatrical, formally precise. It respects the stage roots while understanding the grammar of cinema—the opposite of Turturro's maximalism, but the same conviction.

But Stage-bound and dialogue-heavy. If you're not engaged by the conversation, there's nowhere to hide.

Five Easy Pieces1970

Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson's portrait of a man sliding through relationships, unable to commit or connect. Working-class dissatisfaction that doesn't need music to express itself, but feels like the same impulse.

But Deliberately anticlimactic. Nothing resolves; it just stops, which some find either profound or deeply unsatisfying.

Freddy Got Fingered2001

Both directors use shock, vulgarity, and formal recklessness as love letters to their characters. Both say: you're ugly and stupid and I'm going to make art about that anyway.

Tom Green's deeply weird comedy about a failed cartoonist living with his father. It's repulsive, crude, and utterly sincere—maximalist trash as genuine human expression. If you think Romance & Cigarettes is too arch, Freddy is its chaotic little brother.

But Actively disgusting. Gross-out humour that aims to offend. Most people hate it, and those people are not wrong.

Madame Butterfly1954

Both use music as the truest language for infidelity and betrayal. Both understand that what people say is a lie and what they sing is the truth.

Carmine Gallone's operatic film of Puccini's opera, visually ravishing and emotionally devastating. A man destroys a woman he claims to love. No songs feel like an afterthought—the whole film IS the song. It's what Romance & Cigarettes reaches toward but doesn't quite become.

But It's 104 minutes of opera, sung in Italian. You need to accept the artifice completely or it will feel like torture.