MY NEW YORK YEAR TBC
FILM OUT 21 MAY CINEMAS
Originally entitled My Salinger Year, but inexplicably dumbed down for UK audiences, this twee bildungsroman charts uni grad and aspiring poet Joanna’s (Margaret Qualley) time working in the Big Apple at an antiquated book agency who count the celebrated author of The Catcher In The Rye as one of their clients.
Recently single and meek, Joanna is belittled by a cocky romantic interest/ wannabe novelist (Douglas Booth) and her maven boss Margaret (Sigourney Weaver, wearing the hell out of pearls and cardies) while she attempts to find her artistic voice. Perhaps the reclusive Salinger might be the key to unlocking her creativity and happiness…
Tapping into a (’90s set) The Devil Wears Prada dynamic, My New York Year is at its best when Joanna and Margaret chafe – over working practices, social mores and the insidiousness of computers – and bond unexpectedly when heartbreak visits them both.
But as a drama that ostensibly celebrates writing, there is precious little done or relished. Joanna wants to be ‘extraordinary’, but remains a central casting office drudge, and we see little evidence of the poetry that supposedly drives her; meanwhile, her boyfriend writes bilge, and the art of prose is limited to the transacting nature of the agency. Instead of adhering to the narrative maxim of ‘show, don’t tell’, Philippe Falardeau’s screenplay – based on the real life of Joanna Rakoff – overly relies on voiceover to convey interior life. Pulpy rather than peerless. Jane Crowther