New York flavour without spice
NEW YORK, I Love You is an ensemble film with 10 segments, each written and shot by a different director.
FILM REVIEW: NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU
Reviewed by Don Perlgut
Rating: ***
NEW YORK, I Love You is an ensemble film with 10 segments, each written and shot by a different director.
It comes from the same group that made Paris, Je t’aime a few years ago and the result is frequently touching, occasionally hilarious, often very sexy but maddeningly frustrating at times.
New York has been the setting for hundreds of films and has been the scene for some of history’s best movie romances. And this is not the first time that more than one director has worked on an anthology style film set in NY — New York Stories (1989) had segments filmed by Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
From the opening shot of the East River in New York, I Love You, we know we are closer to Woody Allen than to the grit of Scorsese. It’s an oddly romanticised New York where no-one is mugged and there are no knives or guns, just lots of talk about sex.
Two of the 10 stories (in fact, two of the best) are explicitly Jewish. The “kosher vegetarian” segment directed by Indian-born Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) has Natalie Portman playing a Chassidic diamond merchant about to get married. The story, which features Indian actor Irrfan Khan (Slumdog Millionaire) makes little sense, but Portman’s acting is great.
New York, I Love You is made by an eclectic international group of directors including Israeli-born Yvan Attal from France, Shekhar Kapur from India, Shunji Iwai from Japan, Fatih Akın from Turkey/Germany, Jiang Wen from China and Americans Brett Ratner (Rush Hour), Allen Hughes (The Book of Eli) and Joshua Marston.
The result is European in feel, a series of delicate sexual comedies filled mostly with migrants (as one character explains: “I love New York because everyone is from somewhere else”), far from the brash Americana, and almost virtually lacking any thick NY accents.
Also lacking is a strong sense of place. Considering that few of the directors have ever lived in New York, most appear to have set their segments in unspecified sites in Manhattan, although some take place in Central Park and at a landmarks such as Tavern On The Green and the Dakota apartment building. Where are the other boroughs: Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island?
The exception is the other Jewish segment, written and directed by Marston, and starring Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as an ageing Jewish couple living near Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.
Their story simply has them going to the beach and back home, talking all the time (mostly about the infirmities suffered by Wallach’s character) and is entertaining.
In addition to Portman and Wallach, other Jewish actors in New York, I Love You include James Caan in an excellent but underwritten role as an Italian pharmacist, Shia LaBoeuf, Justin Bartha and a host of Chassidic extras.
Also starring in the film is Andy Garcia, Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Ethan Hawke, Chris Cooper, Robin Wright Penn, Bradley Cooper, Julie Christie and John Hurt.
About six of the stories work very well, and include some quirky surprises … for example, a European who speaks fluent Chinese, a woman who turns out to be a hooker and a hilarious and touching prom scene.
There’s lots of depth and clever writing, but too many characters and not enough interaction between them robs New York, I Love You of its emotional pay-off.
There are no transitions between the stories, and although some characters amusingly do travel to a number of segments, the writing (partly by veteran Jewish playwright and screenwriter Israel Horowitz) simply does not make use of the interconnections between the stories in the way that, for instance, the film Babel does so effectively.
Unfortunately the great scenes simply do not add up, leaving the whole distinctly less than the sum of its parts.
New York, I Love You is currently screening.
PHOTO: Natalie Portman and Abe Karpen in New York, I Love You.
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