It’s been a while since I watched a movie and yesterday it suddenly hit me to watch one again. I decided to watch 2009’s New York I Love You.
The movie is a set of short clips/ scenes which together make up one movie. Many of the clips pertain different types of love story, all set in NYC. It is the city which ties all of the people and stories together, not the storyline. In fact, there is no storyline: each little snippet has its own story, which the occasional character being introduced earlier on in the movie, and sometimes different characters show up in different scenes, but together it does not add up to one story. To me, New York I Love You is a movie about how everyone has their own story within the vast city of New York and how minor coincidences and swift turns of events can make or break relationships.
There’s a petty thief robbing a man of his wallet and ending up taking away his girlfriend. There’s an old couple taking a walk on their 63rd wedding anniversary. There’s a father walking in Central Park with his daughter before handing her back to his ex-wife. There’s a young Yiddish bride fessing up her doubts about her marriage to an Indian diamond dealer. There’s the couple who meet again after a one night stand. There’s a writer trying to hit up a girl. There’s the painter and his subject of interest. And all this is tied together by a girl with a video camera.
The cast list is impressive and impressively long. The same goes for the directors: each snippet has its own script and director and different actors.
Some of the actors: Bradley Cooper, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Orlando Bloom, Andy Garcia, Rachel Bilson, Christina Ricci, Ethan Hawke, James Caan, Shia LaBeouf, John Hurt and Chris Cooper.
At first I found the movie quite confusing, as I didn’t know what to expect when I started watching it. I think this is a movie you’ll enjoy when you like NYC. It gives a good view of the city and the people who live their daily lives in it. If the first scene hadn’t had Andy Garcia, Rachel Bilson & Hayden Christensen in it, I wouldn’t have guessed it was actually a movie, but it felt and looked more like a documentary. The same goes pretty much for the entire movie. Most of the shorts in the movie depict very every day scenes and could easily be mistaken for an account of what life is like living in the City.