Concrete Playground

Many a love letter has been written to Manhattan, but producer Emmanuel Benbihy has managed to pen one more. Or, more accurately, eleven — for the man who worked on Paul Haggis’ Oscar-winning Crash has taken a similar ensemble idea and fashioned it into eleven filmmakers' eight-minute shots that tie together into a (mostly) cohesive narrative called New York, I Love You. Benbihy’s first attempt was the whimsical Paris je t’aime, but this time he has limited his filmmakers to two days of shooting and seven in the editing suite.

The result is a journey into different areas of the Big Apple through a variety of ‘love stories’, with some markedly more tenuous than others. There’s Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo appearing in Allen Hughes’ segment as a pair nervously meeting up in Greenwich Village after a passionate one night stand. And there’s a touching vignette with legends Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach as a New York old married couple, doddering and bickering their way down to the boardwalk at Brighton Beach. Then, more opaquely, is Shekhar Kapur’s study of the Upper West Side, personified by an aged opera singer (Julie Christie) and her curious connection with a hunchbacked, Eastern European bell boy (Shia LeBouf).

Though all the stories may not appeal, it’s hard not to be drawn to the talent involved. The actors include Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Chris Cooper, Robin Wright Penn, Iffran Khan, Ethan Hawke and Natalie Portman. And while New York has been so ironically captured by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Spike Lee, it’s fascinating to see what directors such as Fatih Akin (Soul Kitchen), Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding), Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) and, er, Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) will make of it. The film also marks Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, with a sweet if strained story of a little girl and her father.

Benbihy’s ambitious project resonates with audiences already innately familiar with the cinematic cities of New York and Paris. It will remain to be seen if the same magic will translate for future ‘Cities of Love’ stories, with Shanghai, Mumbai and Jerusalem all set to receive their own heartfelt declarations.