New York, I Love You

In 2006 an amazing vignette film was released celebrating the city of light, Paris. Boasting some top-notch directors and acting talent, Paris, je t’aime was both impressive and highlighted the many facets of Parisian life and culture. 22 directors created a series of moments tied together only by the city their stories resided in. The end result was a fascinating and enjoyable look into the lives of many different people from all different walks of life. With the success of Paris, je t’aime it was only inevitable that an attempt would be made to follow it up. So two years later New York, I Love You was released. 

Right from the start it becomes apparent that this film is inferior to the previous film. This time around there are eleven directors (with two more that contributed stories that ended up being cut after testing poorly) and lots of A-list actors once again. There is a through line here that isn’t found in the first film, too, although it doesn’t add up to much. The stories are less interesting here; this becomes apparent in the very first scene. The film opens up with Ben (Hayden Christensen, showing that his stiff performance in the Star Wars prequels was not just a fluke) using his charms and pickpocketing abilities to hit on a woman at a bar. This is spoiled when her boyfriend, a married NYU professor played by Andy Garcia shows up and proves to be equally adept at picking pockets. The scene is awkwardly played and goes on a beat too long. 

Next we get a conversation between two religious orthodox people, one, a soon to be married woman played by Natalie Portman, and a man whose wife has just decided that marriage is a sin and moved back to her home country to live a higher life. This story is a little more interesting and we get some background details about the two cultures that some people may be unaware of. But, like the first story it goes nowhere. The same can be said about many of the stories in this film. In fact, the title is a bit of a misnomer as around half of the stories aren’t love stories at all and a few barely feature New York outside of it being the setting. 

There are two of these little tales that stood out as being among the better of the bunch. Neither uses the city very well but at least the stories resonated. The first of these stars Orlando Bloom and Christina Ricci. Bloom plays an artist, working on the score for an anime film from his apartment. He’s been tasked to read two of Dostoyevsky’s novels and is finding the job difficult. His assistant, a woman he’s never met played by Christina Ricci, makes him an offer that is both sweet and inspiring. When she shows up at his cramped apartment, hiding her face behind a copy of Crime and Punishment I could feel her insecurity as well as what it took to get her to his doorway.

The other story that resonated with me came near the end of the film. This one is pretty straightforward, starring Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman an an elderly couple griping at each other before settling down for a brief moment of peace and the type of love and comfort that only comes from many years of being together. It’s cute and relatable and is punctuated with just the right note of truthfulness at the end. It does hit the same note a bit too many times but Eli and Cloris are so perfect in the roles that it becomes easy to forget we’re watching two acting legends and not a real life couple out for a walk.

Most of the rest of these tales are forgettable, though, and none of them make use of the city as well as the first film did. We get some glimpses at iconic locations like Central Park and The Dakota, complete with the John Lennon memorial. But mostly these are stories that could easily take place anywhere else and not change one iota of what they are conveying. New York, as vast and as diverse as it is, is no Paris and thus it doesn’t play into the stories nearly as much. This could have utilized the setting better but this set of directors, mostly lesser known than those who worked on Paris, je t’aime, don’t handle the locale nearly well enough for that.

In order for a film like this to succeed it needs to be better than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately that is not the case here. A handful of the stories are enjoyable in their own rights but then there are shorts, like the one with Shia LaBeouf and Julie Christie that are just plain strange. Mostly, though, the stories are unfocused and not memorable.  They’re short at least but once we’re on to the next one we quickly forget the previous. For every Anton Yelchin romantic encounter in the park there’s Bradley Cooper flashing back to a sexual encounter while waiting for the woman to meet up with him again. Throw in a sleazy meeting between Ethan Hawke and Maggie Q, Ethan practically pushing himself on Maggie before the big reveal that she is actually a prostitute and you get the basic flavor of this film. It’s innocuous enough but hardly the love letter to New York and its residences that that title would seem to suggest.  

Release Date: October 16, 2009

Running Time: 103 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Hayden Christensen, Andy Garcia, Rachel Bilson, Natalie Portman, Irrfan Khan, Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Maggie Q, Ethan Hawke, Chris Cooper, Robin Wright Penn, Anton Yelchin, James Caan, Olivia Thirlby, Blake Lively, Bradley Cooper, Drea de Matteo, Julie Christie, John Hurt, Shia LeBeouf, Carlos Acosta, Jacinda Barrett, Uğur Yücel, Shu Qi, Burt Young, Eli Wallach, Cloris Leachman, Emile Obama, Eva Amurri and Justin Barthes.

Directed By: Jiang Wen, Mira Nair, Shinto Iwai, Yvan Attal, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Kapur, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin, Joshua Marston and Randy Balsmeyer.