Fridae

In the beginning, there was Paris, je t’aime. The rules were simple then: 20 directors, 20 short films on love, set in the 20 arrondissements of Paris, the city of love. This time round, the city of choice is New York.

With just 11 short films running at double the length of the Paris shorts, this is a more focussed anthology. But then, there is a distinct lack of big name directors whose names are tied so intimately with the city – names like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, or even the Coen brothers.

But I digress. This time round, the short films are based on the city spaces of New York: its parks, sidewalks, beaches, apartments, singles bars, Chinese medical halls, subways and taxis. In a truly cosmopolitan city, strangers – artists, filmmakers, dancers, immigrants, conmen, hookers, high school students and retirees – meet in chance encounters and experience all sorts of love.

And what a smorgasbord of love stories there are! Perhaps the best segments of New York, I Love You are that offer a more unconventional take on love – such as the late Anthony Minghella’s tale of a Jewish bride and her Jain jeweller and Shekkar Kapur’s elegiac and depressing tale of mortality. Our only disappointment is that this time round, the directors and writers seem far less willing to get engaged with problematic social issues than the previous team.

Compared to its predecessor, this anthology is certainly on a more even keel (though lacking in its artiness), thanks to longer segments that allow directors and writers to fully flesh out their ideas. A recurring story about a filmmaker ties in most of the other segments, and provides a coherence to the entire film that wasn’t present in its predecessor. Fans of Natalie Portman may want to catch her directorial debut as well.