New York Waiting seen at the Tribeca Film Festival
Posted: Friday, May 12, 2006
by Joseph Jagde
The script follows two central characters. The first character Sidney is a vibrant pensive man who sits by the sea on an empty beach, pondering the absence of his beloved girlfriend, who he hasn’t seen in one year. The open seas and scant beachfront with nobody else around accentuates the singularity of his experience. It’s just him, his thoughts, and nature. The scene flips to their last encounter, filmed in black and white, almost as a marker that is seemingly past, and the scene involves them together on a location in tropical Florida in the sweeping rain, surrounded by lush palm trees, speaking to each other but the sound is off on the words, a very effective way of introducing the situation and leaving it uncertain as to what had really happened. Later in the Q and A, the Swiss based director writer of this film, Joachim Haden, says that the relationship with his girlfriend was kept deliberately vague. That same scene is reintroduced later in the film with the sound on, so you realize then what was happening.
In the meantime, the other central character is a women who arrives in New York from San Francisco to meet her yuppie like boyfriend, who seems well intentioned but distracted by his business deals, his cell phone and other lovely women walking about and doesn’t seem to be able to shift his focus back to his girlfriend in a way that makes her feel like she is listened to. It is interesting in that in general he seems to go over the top to please other people, to the point where he is losing his own starting place or base identity, and you wonder if he is hiding some shallowness in doing this. The director writer Joachin Heden said in the Q and A that this character was a composite of people he had met.
She doesn't fight him on his inattention, she just reads it.
The girl and Sidney intersect when she asks to sit at his table in an outdoor café. She takes a momentary slight risk in making this into a chance encounter, and they seem to talk to each other at a similar speed, and talk about their romantic hopes and disappointments. She says goodbye, and begins to leave the outdoor café but then outright asks him to accompany her on a walk in the afternoon. He agrees and the walk takes us into a beautiful early afternoon day in Central Park . Here they seem to connect as two people guardedly hopeful of something better, but nothing is quite said about the forming connection. Sidney doesn’t realize that he is almost the exact opposite of her boyfriend, in wanting to devote himself to his missing girlfriend. The story then flashbacks to scenes of Sidney ’s relationship with his girlfriend back in Florida , again shot in black and white. Scenes take us through exotic boat rides in Florida , and his girlfriend’s beauty seems to match the stunning surrounding scenery. Yet despite all this, she lacks contentment and her thoughts seem to drift away from both the presence of Sidney and the beautiful surroundings and even in some ways her own beauty.
In these evocative flashback scenes to the Florida coastal terrains and inland channels, all shot in black and white, rather than color which was for the rest of the film, you get the feel the Sidney and his girlfriend have the whole place, the whole world really to themselves, yet she still seems lost and distant.
As the story evolves, there is an essential sadness to the character of Sidney in that he wants to give so much, but the universe may not be granting his wishes and his caring may have gone well past the point of reciprocation. But the new girl sees the beauty of his striving, and it gives her new hope and maybe this hope in her is a new chance for him, if he can be alert to it.
The photography of New York which included some nice aerials was quite compelling in this movie as were the black and white scenes in Florida . The soundtrack, let by a number from the singer Tori Amos was also quite compelling. The actors were also quite believable in their character portrayals and you care about their journey.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I like this film, watched it yesterday on tv, the park sceen is really beautiful.. and this article is nice too.
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