Reader's Choice NYC Movie: "Trust The Man"'s Village Fantasia
March 27, 2008 at 3:30 PM |
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This week we took a hint from reader Eva, who recommended the 2006 movie "Trust the Man." On her blog Eva described "Trust the Man" (as well as another romantic comedy, "Prime") as potential successors to former Classic Movies topics "Annie Hall" and "When Harry Met Sally," calling them "smart movies about the way people really relate to each other." So how do people really relate to each other? No surprise: Dysfunctionally.
"Trust the Man" opens with a montage of stage-setting, Allenesque New York locales -- Washington Square Park, Abingdon Market in the West Village, East 10th Street and Stuyvesant Place. By luxuriating over these places, even with no apparent characters in them, writer-director Bart Freundlich is connecting the well-off, Village-dwelling characters in this world to their filmic predecessors.
These people have money, but it doesn't make them happy: Tom (David Duchovny) is not adjusting well to being a stay-at-home dad while his wife Rebecca (Julianne Moore, who happens to be Freundlich's wife) opens a play at Lincoln Center, so he cheats on her and doesn't seem to feel guilty about it. Meanwhile, Rebecca's younger brother Tobey (Billy Crudup) is feeling the pressure from girlfriend Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring children's book author, to settle down. As someone wise described "Hannah and Her Sisters," people meet, people cheat, people love and people leave.
We didn't love this movie, but damned if we didn't want to live in Freundlich's pretty, well-appointed New York. We roared when Tobey's inability to commit is represented by the prioritization of getting his car in alternate-side parking; who besides cads and millionaires own cars in New York, much less in the wee Village? When Tom wants to reclaim his inner single man, he buys his porn not online but from a street vendor at 8th Street, in prime NYU territory, where he is ogled instead of ogling.
The foursome have dinners at real WeeVil locales like Malatesta Trattoria (649 Washington Street) and dip in and out of coffee shops, but their lives are just as snarled as the Village streets.
Our only quibble is with Rebecca's uptown appearances; we love a good play, but with the exception of a brief appearance by Jaunted fave Justin Bartha of "National Treasure" fame, the Lincoln Center scenes are the most painful to watch. Couldn't they have stuck her in some black-box theatre? Still, despite the thanklessness of Gyllenhaal's plot, "Trust the Man" is a solidly New York (specifically Manhattan) movie, and worth a spin in the DVD player.
Related Stories:
· Classic NYC Movies Map [Jaunted]
[Photo: About.com]
by
egw
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