Rating: 4/5
Anti-Criterion Challenge 2024 | 39 / 52 | Cinematography by Theo van de Sande
Ripe plums are falling… may a fine lover come for me while there is still time.
New Day Books is an independently-owned New York bookstore where the New York intelligentsia mingle. The store is celebrating its fundraising goal and ability to stay open another year. Isabelle, who works at the store, walks around, picks up trash, and checks on folks. Isabelle prides herself on knowing famous writers, publishers, and editors and longs to be part of that world herself.
Local author Anton Maes notices Isabelle and ushers Isabelle over. Through awkward exchanges, he signs one of his books, The Cave Dweller, which the store has featured in their window for three weeks, and gives it to Isabelle.
Back at her apartment, Nick surprises her and follows her in. He offers to stay the night. Isabelle asks about his wife, Katrina. She agrees.
The next day, she takes the subway across Delancey St. to the Lower East Side to visit with her bubbe Ida, who gives her $500 for “pulling whiskers.” At the park, Ida surprises Isabelle with a shadchanit (Jewish marriage broker) named Hannah. Through her, Isabelle meets Sam, who runs a corner picket stand.
Isabelle’s options are appearing, but is she open to these possibilities? She claims to be happy with her life among the literati. But life doesn’t write stories. It composes music—sometimes familiar melodies, but always room for surprises.
The film explores modernity vs. tradition and how it affects Isabelle’s future. Isabelle is THE modern woman (as of 1988): independent, successful, and happy. Her bubbe lives in an area of New York that has historically upheld traditional Jewish culture from Poland and the Russian Empire. To cross Delancey is to step back into a tradition that Isabelle has moved away from, living in uptown Manhattan. She hires the marriage broker, much to Isabelle’s chagrin, but meets Sam, who challenges her idea of what a successful man looks like.
Even the modern Gentile Anton talks of ripe plums falling, a Confucian poem about growing old before you can bear children. But Anton is also worldly, speaking French to the wait staff and writing poetry in conversation. He represents the epitome of what Isabelle wants for herself. Of course, Anton is also married and has a tumultuous relationship with his wife, who he rarely sees anymore.
The movie also interrogates the loneliness of modern city life. When one becomes independent from tradition, they are separate from social groups they may have joined. Modernity promises new cultures and a global menu of spaces to which you can belong. But if you are picking a little of this and a little of that, then where is the commitment? If Isabelle is looking for a life partner, can she find it in the modern world?
Neither option is perfect for Isabelle. She must change something about her life to accommodate a man. Also, dating blows no matter how you cut it.
You may think you know where this movie is going, but, you know, music, surprises, and all that.
Man, this one crept up on me! I love the Roches soundtrack. I love Peter Riegert, Reizl Bozyk, and David Hyde Pierce. This film is a rom-com that earns both parts of the genre.