It is a process patented by producer Emmanuel Benbihy. You have a city invaded by filmmakers. In the streets of this city, you ask them to quickly shoot a short film relating a love story. After Paris (Paris I love you), New York is subjected to this treatment, by almost a dozen famous filmmakers (the Chinese Jiang Wen, the French Yvan Attal, the Indian Mira Nair) or less known (the Japanese Shunji Iwai, the American Joshua Marston) plus a very chic debutante, actress Natalie Portman.
The Parisian company had at least the merit of revealing little-known settings. But what square centimeter of New York is still virgin of the cinema? To have New York, I Love You, there is not one left. Especially since ten of the eleven short films offered are shot in Manhattan (Joshua Marston took the subway to Brighton Beach).
Perhaps we will see there a manifestation of the gentrification of the peninsula, in any case all these love stories are a little alike: gently melancholy, discreetly erotic, they sport pretty colors, day and night, and with a few exceptions (Patriarch Eli Wallach, Julie Christie) feature beautiful young people, such as Natalie Portman (who stars in the segment directed by Shekhar Khapur), Hayden Christensens or the exquisite Olivia Thirlby (who can be seen in the series Bored to Death, a soap opera that also offers an idyllic look at New York but does so at least with a real sense of humor).
Instead of serving as a revealer, New York acts as a texturizing agent that gives the same consistency to films by very different directors. It is all the more impressive since some of them are far from devoid of personality.
Still, the love story sketched out between an old painter and a waitress in Chinatown, shot by Fatih Akin, is not very different, in tone and style, from the meeting between a retired soprano ( Julie Christie) and a lame bellhop (Shia LaBeouf) we owe to Shekhar Khapur.
You would never guess that New York can also be a dangerous, unexpected city, in which daily life is not limited to a few quick-witted scams on perfectly swept sidewalks. Finally, it is perhaps the zero tolerance of the former mayor Rudy Giuliani that has derailed this project.
American-French collective film by Mira Nair, Fatih Akin, Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Kapur, Shunji Iwai, Joshuah Marston, Brett Ratner, Jiang Wen, Natalie Portman, Randall Balsmeyer with Natalie Portman, Andy Garcia, James Caan, Julie Christie , Eli Wallach. (1 h 40.)
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