Crossing Delancey
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Movie Reviews of Crossing Delancey
Movie Review: Wonderful love story
Summary: 5 Stars
I Think this is one of the best movies ever. The characters are wonderful.And the acting is great.
Movie Review: Crossing Delancey
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a delightful story. Amy Irving, Peter Riegert, and Reizl Bozyk were absolutely wonderful.Movie Review: Wistful & Charming via the Lower East Side
Summary: 4 Stars
This charming film began life as a play whose author also wrote the the screenplay. Director Joan Micklin Silver's affection for her characters is highly evident in the warmth and humor with which she brings their foibles to life. For those who remember living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1980s, just before it became the land of Dual-Income Yuppies With Twins, the movie may also generate some nostalgia.
Just turned thirty-something Isabelle "Izzy" Grossman (Amy Irving) lives in a dingy ground-floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in one of those lumbering pre-War buildings with vast shadowy lobbies that have seen better days. She has a job she likes at an intellectually chic midtown bookstore (actually the old Gotham on W. 47th Street) that involves coordinating and presenting readings and book discussions by famous and not so famous authors. Her parents are retired and living in Florida, so her nearest local relative is her "Bubbi" (Grandma in Yiddish), widowed and living on a modest income in an apartment in the Grand Street Coops on the Lower East Side (thanks to bookcat1962 for this clarification!). Loving granddaughter that she is, Izzy visits her Bubbi regularly, and Bubbi dotes on her pretty granddaughter.
However, Bubbi (Reizl Bozyk, once a star of the Yiddish Theater in NYC) is terribly concerned that Izzy has crossed over her landmark 30th birthday without showing any signs of finding a nice Jewish boy to settle down with. Bubbi looks down her nose at Izzy's entire lifestyle - her job, her apartment, and most of all, Izzy's insistence that she is just fine as she is and doesn't need a man to make her feel complete. Izzy's group of close girlfriends seem to be having similar problems finding men - most are unmarried and one has opted to have a baby without benefit of clergy. The viewer is treated to dire scenes of unsmiling single women in business clothes picking up dinner from buffets in the Upper West Side's ubiquitous Korean groceries. The film's view that the life of a single woman in Manhattan is one of unrelieved depression, sadness, and lack of fulfillment, is relentlessly underlined. (At one point, Bubbi quotes an alleged college professor's dictum that, "If you're alone, you're sick.") It is made clear that, despite Izzy's protestations to Bubbi about her contentment with her self-sufficient life, underneath it all Izzy longs for romance and commitment.
Impatient with Izzy's resistance to "doing something" about her unfulfilling life, Bubbi takes drastic action and calls in the community's local matchmaker (Sylvia Miles). When Izzy finds out, she is horrified, but to please her grandmother, she agrees at least to meet Sam, the first man the matchmaker wants to present. Played by Peter Riegert, Sam turns out to be a pleasant-faced, well-spoken young man who has inherited and is running his father's small pickle store in the neighborhood. Sam, as one of the neighborhood's eligible bachelors, has often been the matchmaker's target, but he has resisted her blandishments until the day she turned up and pulled out Izzy's photo. Turns out that Sam spotted Izzy in the neighborhood some time ago as she came downtown to visit her Bubbi, and for Sam, it was close to love at first sight.
So, he's nice looking, college-educated, is perhaps a bit old-fashioned (he is more observant about religious practice than Izzy), but easy on the eyes, nicely dressed, obviously crazy about Izzy and in the market for a serious relationship - it would seem that, between them, Bubbi and the matchmaker have hit pay dirt on the first try, no?
No. Izzy cannot get past the fact that Sam makes and sells pickles for a living on the Lower East Side - hence the meaning of the film's title, "Crossing Delancey": Delancey Street, for you non-New Yorkers out there, is the northern border of the Lower East Side, and chic Upper West Sider that she is, with pretensions to Being Somebody on Manhattan's arty literary scene, Izzy cannot quite get herself across that divide. She turns down Sam's suggestion that they go out to dinner to get to know each other, much to everyone's disappointment.
Sam, however, is determined not to let Izzy get away, and sensing that her reluctance has more to do with what he does than who he is, he sets about trying to broaden her outlook. Sam has his work cut out, as Izzy's see-sawing ambivalence toward him is increased by the distraction of a charismatic but self-involved European author (Jeroen Krabbe) who is part of her bookstore's stable of writers, and who suddenly begins to take an interest in Izzy.
Izzy, at last, must come to some decision about who she is, what she really wants, and where she belongs. Her journey, as she learns to navigate the distance between West 79th Street and Delancey Street is funny, wistful, and sweet, if a tad one-sided in perspective. Some women may object, with justice, to the film's unsubtle viewpoint that a woman alone is a disaster, life without marriage is not worth living, a husband and children are the only path to fulfillment, etc. If this perspective offends you, the film's very real charm will be lost on you. Otherwise, this adorable movie will likely touch your heart.
The cast is delightful, although Amy Irving had deep circles under her eyes and looked nearly ill - she seemed to be photograhped through linoleum - I believe she was going through her divorce from Steven Spielberg at the time, but don't quote me on that. Peter Riegert hits just the right note as Sam, although the character as written is somewhat too good to be true (certainly not Riegert's fault, and perhaps the film's only narrative flaw apart from its naked contempt for unattached women). Suzzy Roche is very appealing as Izzy's best friend, and Reizl Bozyk hams it up as Bubbi, although her hamming pales beside that of Sylvia Miles as the matchmaker. Jeroen Krabbe is sleazily attractive as the self-dramatizing poet.
The film is accompanied by a pretty score referencing an early 1960s love song recorded by former teen-idol Shelley Fabares (remember her?!), and the scenes of life in 1980s Manhattan are authentic and engaging. It's a one-of-a-kind film that most people will take immediately to their hearts.
Movie Review: What's a Nice Jewish Girl to Do?
Summary: 4 Stars
It has taken nearly twenty years for this bittersweet 1988 romantic comedy to make it to DVD, but it is a welcome return since director Joan Micklin Silver and writer Susan Sandler effectively convey the angst of a thirtysomething Jewish woman constantly looking to reconcile her past with her present. Without going overboard on ethnic stereotypes, it focuses on Isabelle "Izzy" Grossman, who works in a Manhattan bookstore which has become a magnet for the literary intelligentsia. In typically formulaic fashion, she is a typical urban single who spends her free time with her girlfriends or at home alone when she is not providing shelter for a married friend who is constantly fighting with his wife.
What makes this story unique is Izzy's close relationship with her opinionated grandmother, Bubbie, who lives in the working-class Lower East Side. Bubbie is determined to see Izzy get married and hires a mouthy broker to find an appropriate suitor. Enter Sam Posner, who owns the local pickle store and has to dip his fingers in vanilla to rid himself of the smell. A thoroughly grounded mensch, he initially doesn't excite Izzy, who has become smitten with the intellectual pretension of an egocentric Dutch author, Anton Maes. There's a lot of hemming and hawing before the inevitable conclusion with scenes both inspired and predictable along the way. There are several lightly amusing bits like a restaurant roundelay where Izzy tries to pawn Sam off to an anxious girlfriend. Never the most electrifying of actresses, Amy Irving provides a becalming assurance as Izzy and makes us feel for her as she grapples with her small-scale dilemmas. Irving manages to make Izzy rather sympathetic even when she is manipulating Sam's affections.
The incessantly low-key Peter Riegert is likable as Sam, and he leavens his relatively bland presence with his character's plaintively romantic overtures toward Izzy. He has a nice moment when he explains to Izzy why he decided to move forward with the arranged meeting. I just wish the two actors had more opportunities to articulate the characters' inner conflicts and a greater sense of romantic chemistry. In her only screen performance, veteran Yiddish theater performer Reizl Bozyk plays Bubbie with infectious energy even if she is confined within her ethnic stereotype. As Anton, Jeroen Krabbé adds to his gallery of smug European aristocrats, though at least this time with a jaded sense of humor. Sylvia Miles is her over-the-top self in the gratefully brief role of the matchmaker, while folk singer Suzzy Roache does well as Izzy's cynical girlfriend Marilyn. In fact, the Roaches are the ones who provide the background music here. The 2007 DVD only offers the original theatrical trailer as an extra.
Movie Review: Home is Where the Heart Is...
Summary: 4 Stars
In Crossing Delancey Amy Irving stars as Isabella "Izzy" Grossman, a nice Jewish 30-ish lady who wants to think of herself as a sophisticated modern New York woman who has outgrown her background. Izzy works in a Manhattan bookstore, but this isn't one of those mall conglomerate chain bookstores, this is one of those cozy Manhattan stores where crowds gather for poetry readings and famous literati walk in regularly.
Izzie's Bubbie, played by Reizl Bozyk, is the kind of Jewish grandmother who wants to know "so why aren't you married yet??" She hooks Izzie up with an old school Matchmaker played by Sylvia Miles. To placate her Bubbie, Izzy agrees to meet with the matchmaker and her match, Sam, a nice guy played by Peter Riegert. Sam has inherited his father's pickle business and you just know that Izzie would no sooner marry a pickle man than Jed Clampett.
Jeroen Krabbe plays Anton Maes, an arrogant and self-centered writer who strokes Izzie's ego by offering her a job as his personal assistant. Anton has, perhaps, less than pure motives.
Will Izzie wind up with Anton or Sam? When I saw this film on it's initial release I thought that it was an excellent romantic comedy with smart, accomplished characters. On a second viewing two decades later the characters seemed a little more cardboard, but there are romantic comedies far worse than "Crossing Delancey". It makes me wish Amy Irving had made as many romantic comedies as Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock.