Visions of Johanna
“The Only Living Boy in New York” begins with narration by a character played by Jeff Bridges. He’s waxing poetic about a New York that was and the New York that is, about a city in which cool-and-unique rock clubs have given way to Urban Outfitters and SoulCycle — a safer New York, now that the junkies are found in the suburbs, not the city.
“Everyone pretends it’s all OK,” he says. “That’s a lie.”
And so we have a theme that will permeate an odd but reasonably enjoyable drama about a young man, Callum Turner’s Thomas, who likes a girl — Kiersey Clemons, Mimi, who sees him as a friend — and then turns his attentions to having an affair with the beautiful woman, Kate Beckinsale’s Johanna, who already is sleeping with his father, Pierce Brosnan’s Ethan, who is cheating on his wife and the young man’s mother, Cynthia Nixon’s Judith.
Got that? Good, because you also need to know Bridges’ W.F., a mysterious, eloquent and educated — he knows “the exact temperature it takes to cook heroin, properly” — drunk who moves into Thomas’ building and immediately looks to take on the role of sage to the lad.
“I’ve had a bad day,” Thomas tells the stranger in the stairwell, suggesting he’s not in a mood to chat.
“What’s her name?” W.F. replies.
As Thomas processes his romantic rejection at the hands of Mimi, with whom he has spent one magical night, he learns of his father’s affair and begins to follow Johanna. Before he can work up the nerve to confront her, she confronts him — she knows that he is following her and that he is Ethan’s son.
The pair will continue to talk, with Johanna accusing Thomas of “trying to make love” her.
“Were you?” W.F. asks Thomas on a subsequent trip to a food market?
Whether Thomas knows it, he was, and soon they do sleep together. What follows throughout the course of “The Only Living Boy in New York” is an increasingly tangled web — and, hey, the family at the center of this tale bears the name Webb! — that manages to remain interesting enough, thanks in part to the film’s rather brief runtime.
Also sharing the name Webb is the film’s director, Marc Webb, as in the helmer of 2009 romantic dramedy “500 Days of Summer,” 2012’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” and its 2014 sequel. Typically with his work, the good outweighs the bad — although his abandoned “Spider-Man” vision looks worse in comparison to this summer’s spectacular “Spider-Man: Homecoming” — and that’s the case here. Webb, quite wisely, errs on the side of leaving us wanting a little more than giving us too much of this story.
Speaking of that story, the script by Allan Loeb (“21,” “The Space Between Us”) is successful at drawing us into the lives of the tangled Webbs, but ultimately we are left with a question: Why was this stunning woman — Beckinsale has never looked more gorgeous — so interested in the Webb men, or at least in Thomas? As he points out to her early on, she could have any man in the city. It’s hinted at that perhaps Johanna simply is self-destructive, but that’s not really explored to any satisfying degree.
And what of the mysterious W.F.? The more time we watch him interact with Thomas, as well as disappear now and then, we worry Loeb and Webb
might be trying to pull a “Fight Club”-ian trick here, but, fortunately, that is not the case. (The first rule of being the only living boy … oh, never mind.)
Like everything else with this movie, the acting is a net positive. Bridges (“Hell or High Water”) isn’t stretching any new muscles here, but he’s nonetheless interesting, as is Brosnan (“The November Man”). As the focus of our story and in amongst some veteran actors, Turner (“Green Room”) feels a bit in over his head but isn’t quite a problem. We’d like to see more of Clemons (“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising”) — and we will, as she’s set to play a character connected to The Flash in the upcoming “Justice League” and 2020’s “Flashpoint” — who makes the most of limited screen time. The same can’t quite be said for Beckinsale (“Underworld: Blood Wars”) — she’s fine, but, again, her character is underwritten.
Johanna simply seems to be there to give us eye candy and drive a wedge between publisher Ethan and his drifting, possibly talented-writer son whom Dad does not want to see go into that competitive, oftendeflating field. Well, she’s also there so W.F. can reference the great Bob Dylan tune “Visions of Johanna” — a song that, like Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy in New York,” the movie eventually delivers.
Like a Big Apple that now has too many chain retailers, “The Only Living Boy in New York” isn’t all it could be, but it’s still worth a visit.