There are a few cities in the world that actually live up to their hype – magic, you think, is somehow folded into their very brickwork and architecture, and there, anything can… anything DOES happen. Paris is one of those fabled cities, as is New York. So, not surprisingly, New York, I Love You follows in the wake of earlier portmanteau film experiment, Paris Je T’Aime. Eight short films, made by eight different directors (including Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, Yvan Attal and Natalie Portman), telling eight love stories out of the millions that are surely set in the Big Apple.
As with any film made up of eight functionally separate units, some films are better than others. They’re the ones that leap to mind for me even now, a couple of months after I watched the movie. The best of the lot is the achingly simple short film focused on a walk taken by an old couple (played by Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach) through the streets of Brookyln. There’s a charming surrealism as well to the discomfort of a teenage boy (Anton Yelchin) who discovers that the blind date (Olivia Thirlby) he’s taking to the prom is in a wheelchair… even as he gets amply rewarded for it in the most surprising way. Another short film stars a writer (Ethan Hawke) trying to chat up a mysterious lady (Maggie Q) on a random street corner in Manhattan… while a first encounter between Alex (Chris Cooper) and Anna (Robin Wright Penn) proves to be something more.
But, unlike Paris, this film has more mediocre, frustrating segments than good ones. Portman’s short film – in which she plays a Hasidic Jew about to get married – both features strangely stilted camerawork and feels… off. The love story she’s trying to tell is supposed to embrace multi-culturalism, but the beats are wrong. Julie Christie plays famous opera singer Isabelle, who forms a connection with crippled hotel butler Jacob (Shia LaBoeuf), that ends up being bizarre rather than affecting. Other stories featuring pickpockets and tortured artists flit onto the screen, but don’t leave much of an impact.
I’d like to say that the films at least makes good use of their shared locale. Certainly, New York tries to make the city a pulsing, vibrant character that ties the entire enterprise together, more so than Paris ever did. The short films are interwoven, sliced up and sprinkled in amongst one another, so that it does feel like any one of these characters could meet – as one does in New York City – for the beginning of a new story. Without a doubt the location, buildings and the feel of New York, are the best things about the movie. But some of the short films barely even try and could be set just about anywhere – which surely defeats the purpose of their being made in the first place.
shawneofthedead 