When Barton Met Bruce

James Gandolfini, Christopher Walken, Kate Winslet, show tunes - what's not to like about Romance & Cigarettes?

News that London Underground have summarily banned (sorry, 'rejected') a provocative image of English rose Kate Winslet from their station walls may come as a surprise to those who consider the award-winning actress to be something of a national treasure.

Having already allegedly suffered the indignity of having her legs digitally altered for the poster of Romance & Cigarettes, Kate now finds her recumbent image plastered with a large red stamp obscuring what "they" didn't want you to see, instead redirecting one's gaze to the website for the movie (run, incidentally, by Icon, who understand the selling power of a good scandal). The un-censored poster is, of course, so innocuous that it's hard to see what all the fuss was about in the first place. (I actually concluded - incorrectly - that it was the smoking rather than the sexiness that must have been the issue.) Yet the movie itself, from actor turned-writer/director John Turturro happily contains plenty to offend the faint hearted. Hooray!

Gleefully indulging in the Chaucerian pleasures of verbal obscenity, Romance & Cigarettes (which features karaoke-style song and dance numbers) is described by Turturro as a "down and dirty musical love story" designed to encompass the full spectrum of human experience; love and hate; sex and death; tenderness and lust. At the heart of this duality is Tula, a brassy northern lass played by Ms Winslet, whose casually coarse conversation would shame the stars of Clerks.

According to her director, Winslet not only came up with some of the best lines herself, but "there were some things that Kate said that had to be cut out because they were just too dirty for the film." There were even (unfounded) rumblings of a potential NC-17 rating in the States - all on the basis of the film's fabulously foul-mouthed pedigree.

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