Hotel New York

I saw this film in I think San Francisco or Los Angeles in 1984 at a film festival and was quite surprised at its dopey comedic attempt from a filmmaker trained in the New Wave French cinema of Rohmer, Goddard and Rivette. The film is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of a French film editor Loulou, who comes to New York and has trouble adapting to the culture. It is amusing to see cameos from Gary Indiana as the gay son, who was an art critic for the Village Voice, Sid Geffen (who died in 1988) the owner of Bleecker Street and Carnegie Hall Cinema's who plays the wealthy father who hires Loulou and then seduces her and, of all people, Errol Morris before he became the famed filmmaker who redefined documentary film for his generation.

But the film is totally DOPEY and of no particular consequence and you wonder which writer could script these lines and scenes but ultimately this is Raynal's film. Raynal had been and editor for Eric Rohmer (Sign of Leo) and had connection to the East Village scene of Jonas Mekas and was heralded in the late 60s as a groundbreaking feminist filmmaker. But, "Hotel New York" is no better blocked, visualized, and directed than a beginning undergraduate student film. It struggles to be a French farce or a Woody Allenish tableaux of New York life. And it succeeds at neither.

This is a semi-autobiographical, semi-fantastic film about Loulou's arrival and early life in New York City in the mid-eighties. Loulou pays an exorbitant amount of rent to sleep in the corner of a loft; her wacky roommates and peers are chock-full of the kinds of "américainismes" that continue shock and delight the French. The young monteuse / cinéaste finds time outside of her editing duties to seduce a TV producer whose gay son just can't seem to finish his movie or get married. If you're not French, you might not get most of the jokes. If you're not an English speaker, you might not get them either, as the film has yet to be blessed by dubbing services or subtitles. It's not an unpleasant 62 minutes to pass if you're an anglophone grappling with the intricacies of contemporary French culture. But in any case, I have a hard time imagining you'd get a chance to actually see this film outside of the New York movie house that the filmmaker manages. If you HAVE seen the picture, please do take a minute to add your comments; I'd love to hear get someone else's perspective.