Anthology films are always a mixed bag filled with hits and misses. New York, I Love You is the follow-up to Paris, je t’aime and the second in the “Cities of Love” franchise. Films set in Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, and Jerusalem are coming.
Paris featured a series of short films set in the City of Lights and directed by a talented assortment of filmmakers such as Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men), Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep), Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven, and the Coen Brothers. Its successor is comprised of several shorts about romance in the Big Apple. Though the directors aren’t of the same pedigree as Paris, New York has assembled an A-list ensemble of actors. Unlike Paris, New York attempts to connect each story with interstitials of the various characters bumping into each other.
The film begins with a segment by actor/director Jiang Wen (Devils on the Doorstep) with Hayden Christensen as a pickpocket who runs into Rachel Bilson and a more experienced thief in Andy Garcia. Mira Nair directs the next short starring Natalie Portman as a Hasidic Jew negotiating a sale of jewelry with a Hindu man. They bond over their respective relationships and religions. Portman also makes her directorial debut with a later vignette involving a male nanny (Carlos Acosta) and his young charge.
Scarlett Johansson also made her directorial debut with a black & white segment starring Kevin Bacon. Titled “These Vagabond Shoes,” it was cut from the theatrical release, but is available on the DVD.
It says a lot about New York, I Love You when the strongest episode is the one directed by freakin’ Brett Ratner. His segment features Anton Yelchin taking a blind date to the prom. The date (Olivia Thirlby) arrives at the door in a wheelchair. It’s a cute short that doesn’t end quite as you’d expect. Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) helms the second best segment with Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as an elderly couple bickering along the streets of NY.
The movie makes its audience feel like a passive viewer floating through the lives of the city’s inhabitants. Unfortunately, these lives are just plain dull. Everything is so innocuous. None of the directors have anything interesting to say about love, relationships, or the city. Except for a scene in Central Park, there’s nothing distinctly New York about the film. It could have been called Toronto, I Love You without much difference.
All the shorts look exactly the same with the sequence by Shekhar Kepur who took over from the late Anthony Minghella. Kepur gives his piece an ethereal quality grounded by the wonderful presence of Julie Christie as a blind opera singer. However, everything is so confoundingly pretentious (or pretentiously confounding, if you prefer) coupled with Shia LaBeouf laughingly playing a crippled bellhop with some indiscernible accent. Mutt Williams as Igor.
New York, I Love You may be a slick and polished affair, but it has all the substance of a bad student film festival.
Rating: *
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