A NY Thing (2009) (original) (raw)
Synopsis
Masquerading as another man, Antoine flies to New York for a three-day stay and promptly falls in love with Alice, who's dating someone else. When that doesn't work out for him, Antoine turns to the city itself for inspiration.
Cast
Popular reviews
nothing special but is does feature “indie darling, greta gerwig” as they said in the description
This is a Greta Gerwig movie where a character namedrops John Sayles (among many other famous cinematic Johns) and it still didn't quite win me over. An alright indie rom-com whose New York atmosphere and 35mm wispiness is doing much more of the heavy lifting than its main couple or its incredibly thin false-identity plot. Gerwig is the best thing about it and there's not nearly enough of her and her still-unparalleled ability to act with her gums.
Greta Gerwig, yeah? Well, trying to be something special, but not really achieving it. Jonathan ZaccaĂŻ plays Antoine, our hero, a French twentysomething guy who chases his love from Paris to New York City. But he must pretend to not want the girl he does. A Radnor-esque, Braff-esque, Hawke-esque "sweet" mumbley hipster romance? I guess, but NY THING has enough ideas to distinguish itself -- other than Gerwig as a small but crucial side part -- but not enough, really, to succeed anywhere.
Everyone's feeble at the start (you can bet): the French guy trying to fit in ("You guys have a lot of humor, I guess, huh?"), the American single girl played by Gerwig, weakly trying her flirtatious French…
Probably Greta Gerwig’s least watched film. Even the person writing the summary blurb for this on Letterboxd clearly didn’t watch it.
In his one and only feature film, French director Olivier Lécot put together an interesting-looking film but failed to support it with an interesting story. At least the gritty NYC art house aesthetic kept me paying attention long after I realized I didn’t care about any of the characters. For the first time in my journey through Gerwig’s filmography, that includes her too. Why does her one role playing a character named Tami have to suck?? All of the awkward fumbling and mumbling without her usual charisma.
It was fun, however, to see an early performance by Ebon Moss-Bachrach after recently coming to love him on the tv show The Bear. Small roles by Reg E. Cathey and Stephanie Szostak were also pleasant surprises.
i understand this french woman’s taste in men that look like a wet dog
So many movies where Americans seem uncool in France, finally a movie where French people seem uncool in America.
“You just fell for a stranger. You’re confusing a kind of romantic impulse with love.”
Not great, but not too bad a watch to be honest.
i have such a soft spot in my heart for late 2000s-mid 2010s low budget indie mumblecore films like A NY Thing. some may see them as pretentious or privileged, but to me they represent raw, grounded stories that don't need flashy stars or music to keep the viewer's attention, but instead rely on a strong and interesting plot and flawed but relatable characters.
this movie is a complicated and tortured love story about two French lovers in NYC who are separated by one thing, and that's that one of the lovers has a boyfriend. it is set against the vibrant, gritty backdrop of pre-gentrified New York, which is so nice to see and definitely enhances the story.
my only critique was that all of the few BIPOC in the movie were nameless characters who only existed to propel forward the white man's story. .5 stars off for that.
I've watched a lot of bad movies solely because Greta Gerwig is in them, and this one is no different. At least Greta was in it a decent amount. My man not realizing Greta was all over him is a massive L. The whole John bit might've been the dumbest thing I've seen this year.
