Eleven Tales of Love in the City That Never Sleeps
It’s like making a quilt. You start with two patches that are different in size, color, or texture, and you sew them together. Then you introduce another patch – just as different as the first two – then another, and another, and so on. Out of each patch streams an original story or insight, beautiful in its own right, and worthy of its own evaluation. But it’s the collective unit of patches that is really special – the idea that all of these individual pieces can create a much larger story with a singular vision.
New York, I Love You is the second installment in the “Cities of Love” series. Producer Emmanuel Benbihy conceived of the idea of having several directors each make short films that would be weaved into a feature-length film, with love as the central theme for each short. The series, which began with 2006’s Paris, je t’aime, has transcended continents, finding its way to one of America’s most beloved cities. Benbihy stated, “I started with Paris because that is where I am from, but I always intended to do something similar for all the mythic cities, of which New York, of course, had to be a part.”
A collection of world-class filmmakers was asked to participate in this innovative form of storytelling. Each was charged with conceiving a story set in a New York neighborhood and shooting an eight-minute segment over the course of two days, and two days only. From there, each director was granted just seven days of editing while another director would begin her or his own shoot. In total, the entire project was shot in eight weeks with 11 directors at the helm.
As could be expected, some individual segments are stronger than others. Unfortunately, a single flop is capable of bringing down the entire project. Though New York, I Love You is far from a flop, it is not a masterpiece. The overall victory did not come from any individual segment, but from the ambitious nature of the project and the ability to fuse 11 different stories together into one cohesive unit, all the while maintaining a singular flavor. Despite this, each short is worth evaluation and did its own part to either elevate or depreciate the overall film.
Acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair (Amelia, Monsoon Wedding) is a feature film director. This is evident in her segment, which is more ambitious than the allotted eight minutes allows. Nair’s story, set in Manhattan’s Diamond District, features an Indian diamond merchant (Irrfan Khan) negotiating over a gem with a Hasidic Jewish woman (Natalie Portman). Despite the woman’s upcoming nuptials, the two share a connection that would be best explored and understood in a feature-length film. The story falls flat, leading one to wonder where the characters’ mutual attraction is founded. The absent back story elicits a slew of questions that are never answered, leading to a contrived ending and a blank expression on the audience’s collective face.
Nair’s contribution wasn’t the only flop, as several of the other filmmakers were clearly outside their comfort zones by leading the charge on a short film, in which a full narrative needs to be told in just about 5% of the time that they are used to. There were successes, however. The overall feature was elevated by directors Yvan Attal (My Wife Is an Actress) and Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace).
In Attal’s tale (I couldn’t resist), an overly persistent man (Ethan Hawke) attempts to seduce a woman (Maggie Q) on the streets of SoHo, unaware of a secret that she conceals until the very end. Witty dialogue, a strong reveal, and two terrific performances easily make this one of the feature’s strongest contributions. Hawke honors the “Academy Award nominee” prefix on his name with one of the three best performances in the entire feature.
The other two “best” performances belong to screen veterans Academy Award-winner Cloris Leachman and Emmy Award-winner Eli Wallach. Directed by Marston, the two actors worked opposite each other in the only short directed outside Manhattan. In the feature’s closing segment, Leachman and Wallach play an aging married couple on their way to Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach to celebrate their wedding anniversary, just as they have every year prior. The segment is arguably the simplest of the lot, focusing on one insight: that behind the bickering and stubbornness that comes from a long marriage, the love that binds two people together is stronger than it has ever been. Leachman’s and Wallach’s performances are sure to draw emotion from any audience. It’s inconceivable that these two veteran actors hadn’t seen each other since they studied together 50 or 60 years ago. In this segment, they were who they portrayed themselves to be: a married couple sharing a life-long love. In just minutes, Marston displays a great amount of control and maturity in such a simple story that, in a way, spans the 60+ years of this couple’s love.
The feature’s remaining directors comprise an international who’s who, including Jiang Wen, Shunji Iwai, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Kapur, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin, and Randy Balsmeyer. The combined star-studded cast also features Hayden Christensen, Andy Garcia, Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Chris Cooper, Robin Wright Penn, Anton Yelchin, James Caan, Olivia Thirlby, Blake Lively, Drea De Matteo, Bradley Cooper, Julie Christie, John Hurt, Shia LaBeouf, and Carlos Acosta, among others. (Along with Hawke, Leachman, and Wallach, Academy Award-winner Julie Christie’s performance is among the feature’s best, though her segment, directed by Kapur, is not one of the film’s strongest.)
If each segment is a quilt’s patch, the transitions are the seams. Balsmeyer was up to the challenge of weaving each square together to make the audience believe they all belonged in the same quilt. Along with featuring characters from the shorts in the transitions, one common character was that of a videographer capturing the essence of New York City through her camera’s lense. Benbihy explains, “One of the wonderful ideas that Randy Balsmeyer brought to us was that of using a videographer – an artist whose work unifies the people all around her – to unify our stories.”
New York, I Love You is a composite of hits and misses, but the overall film is tied together well with strong transitions and a clear understanding of the varied looks, sounds, and feels of love in New York City. The “Cities of Love” series will continue with Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai in 2010, and Jerusalem and Mumbai in 2011. The current installment premiered at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival and is in limited release starting today.
Rating: 4/5
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Runtime: 110 minutes
MPAA Rating: R, for language and sexual content
