Release date: October 16, 2009
Director : Jiang Wen, Mira Nair, Shunji Iwai, Faith Akin, etc.
Genre: Love / Plot
Starring : Natalie Portman, Shia LaBeouf, Orlando Bloom, etc.
Reader: Bai Xiaoding
Recommendation Index: ★★★★☆☆ One-
sentence review: Ten fragments piece together a city , form is greater than content, and blandness is greater than surprise.
"New York, I Love You" is a platter-style film, and a dozen directors, in two days, each spent eight minutes to complete a story about "searching for love" that happened in New York.
As a long-term project, the focus of the "Love City" series of films has always been the international metropolis, from the romantic Paris to the restrained New York.
Such a collection of works can be regarded as a "puzzle" to promote a city. A otaku meets a beautiful woman, a middle-aged couple pretends to be a stranger to flirt, and an old couple loves each other. These stories are either absurd, or warm, or romantic, or Strange, some seem to be happening around us, some seem to be just the memories of others, each piece combined together is a style painting of New York love.
Unlike the previous "Paris, I Love You", which used neighborhoods to divide the story, the whole film does not have the opening subtitles of the short films, and all the stories are strung together mainly through transitions, thus blurring the independence between the short films. It's like a movie, rather than ten sides of New York each telling its own, it's more closely related to the theme of love. However, because these small stories are not clearly separated and mixed together, plus the jumping editing, the fourth story is often finished and the first story is returned, which undoubtedly tests the audience's memory and understanding.
I don't know if it's because of lack of time or because of the same ideas. Every story makes people feel like a little taste of the clouds and water, and it becomes a leopard in the tube. Although the ten directors have their own shooting styles, the atmosphere, mood, and content of the filming are quite similar, and even the roles with vague occupations are somewhat similar, so that for a long time, I feel that these stories seem familiar, if Changing the background to Beijing, Tokyo, San Francisco can also happen, unlike "Paris, I Love You" which makes people feel the same way. The regional characteristics of New York are not fully and distinctly reflected in this film, so that the audience simply cannot understand the inner spirit of a city from a few minutes of stories.
If Woody Allen was filmed, he could capture the New Yorker's idea of "living elsewhere", without Fifth Avenue, without the Central Garden, without the skyscrapers, and it would also make people feel very New York, only living in Therefore, people who both love and hate the city can capture such a unique feeling.
The two favorite works in the comparison of proposition compositions of more than a dozen directors, one is to commemorate the work of the master Anthony Minghella who passed away unexpectedly. The aged female singer returns to the hotel where she visited when she was young. Intertwined, showing the atmosphere that is close at hand, but has gone beyond others; the other is the first time Natalie Portman directed the conflict between family interaction and secular prejudice with the help of a pair of father and daughter with different skin colors. Delicate and moving, one look can tell all the emotions.
There are also Chinese elements in the film, which can only be said to be embellishments, not exciting. The story directed by Jiang Wen is short and pithy, the father and son meet unexpectedly, and the ending is a bit interesting, but the overall feeling is very casual and too sloppy; and the appearance of Shu Qi and MaggieQ, more just acted as the symbols of Oriental masks.
The interweaving and fusion of multiple elements and multiple cultures is actually the charm of this city, and it is also the place that such a "plattery-style" film is meant to advocate. I am looking forward to the next stop of this series - Shanghai, how to interpret the story of love in China. I hope to give them more time to understand Shanghai well, instead of focusing on the surface and mere formality.
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