Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Autumn in New York

Published on: March 23rd, 2004

AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

3/10

USA 2000
director : Joan Chen
producers include : Amy Robinson
script : Allison Burnett
cinematography : Gu Changwei
editing : Ruby Yang
lead actors : Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, Elaine Stritch, Anthony LaPaglia
103 minutes

Thats autumn, not fall, mind you: were supposed to think were in for an unusually classy, stylish kind of cinematic weepie. As the roughly contemporary Sweet November reminds us, its a tough genre at the best of times, with sentimental pitfalls at every turn. Can it be an accident that the best, most moving example remains the aggressively un-classy Harold and Maude, with Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort as one of the movies least photogenic couples?

Autumns Gere and Ryder are better looking, of course, and a closer match in terms of age (though not by that much) but this all counts for little in the face of such a lame, po-faced screenplay: audiences are always going to find something to laugh at in any weepie, so film-makers might as well make the humour intentional. No such luck here we ploddingly follow womanising celebrity-chef Gere as he woos and beds elfin milliner Ryder, only to discover a chronic heart defect means she’s living on borrowed time. There is a risky operation might save her life, but she refuses to consent for no very good reason, except to add a bit of drama to the flimsy plot.

This script is full of these contrivances, complicating things with extraneous sub-plots – there’s a particularly aimless strand about a mysterious woman who turns out to be Geres daughter – and clunking bits of back story. It turns out, for example, that Gere once romanced Ryders late mother – the woman we see in photographs looks like (but surely can’t be) Natalie Wood. Its almost hinted that he might even have had something going in the distant past with her crusty grandmother (Stritch). The grandmother is easily the most interesting character on view, but Stritch ends up short-changed, given only a couple of scenes to flesh out a complex, cynical character. Burnett instead wastes screen time by having everyone constantly harping on about the age gap between the couple why makes a point of telling us that he’s 48 and she’s 22, given that Gere was 50 during filming, Ryder (whos actually as appealing as the material allows) a relatively geriatric 29?

Theres no shortage of similarly baffling touches that give the whole enterprise a half-baked, first-draft feel. Take the pairs first date he asks her to design a hat for the woman he’s intending to take to a glitzy charity evening. When she arrives with the hat, he reveals that he lied: shes the date. So, after all that palaver, why doesn’t she wear the hat to the function? What she does wear is a long, gorgeous silky dress that he’s bought for her and she then proceeds to let it trail down some grimy, damp stone steps. Just as the whole hat-making business is never mentioned again, Ryders twentysomething friends only appear right at the start and right at the end, when they suddenly materialise in the hospital to hold each others hands during that tricky operation.

An operation which is followed, of course, by the inevitable shot of the surgeon walking down the corridor, silent, but his face and gestures telling all. Typical of Chens pedestrian, unimaginative direction. And will film-makers ever realise there’s no law stating that all productions set in cities must begin with a series of helicopter shots, skimming over the water then rising to dart among the skyscrapers? Weve seen all this, more than enough times now show us something else.

14th June, 2001

by Neil Young

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