# Autumn in New York (2000)

### reviewed by
JONATHAN RICHARDS

    MOVIES     Jonathan Richards

    MIDDLE-AGED MAN MEETS GIRL

    AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

    Directed by Joan Chen
    Screenplay by Allison Burnett
    With Richard Gere, Wynona Ryder
    De Vargas     PG-13     103 min

He (Richard Gere) is a silver-haired womanizer with nearly a half-century under his belt, owner-chef of the kind of trendy New York restaurant where salad costs 35 bucks. She (Wynona Ryder) is an adorable pixie-haired gamine of 22, from a Manhattan socialite family that can afford that salad. She makes cute hats out of wire, and has a bum ticker. "Nobody thought I'd last this long," she tells him. They fall in love. As his best friend (Anthony LaPaglia) points out, "she's the perfect woman for you -- young, beautiful, and on the way out."

She may be young and doomed, but she represents three generations of her family: herself, her tough old granny (Elaine Stritch), and her mother, now dead, with whom Gere once was in love back in the '70s. "She never slept with him," Granny assures her, to eliminate any taint of something vaguely incestuous, "She was too old-fashioned for that."

For romantic small talk, he tells her about her mother. "Her favorite singer was Stephen Stills." She is of course too young to remember Stills, which probably explains why she doesn't seem familiar with this plot either.

In the beginning they giggle a lot, and she sasses him with smart talk. "Do you think I'm too old for you?" "No, I collect antiques." By the end, there are a lot of brave smiles, and the smart talk has turned poignant. "You've ruined me for other women." "No, I've saved you for them."

His womanizing is legend, but she starts right in to devote her few remaining mortal months to changing him. When he boffs an old flame at a party, she finds out by putting her hand on his heart to see if he's lying (he is). Boy loses girl. Boy grovels. Boy gets another chance.

Gere and Ryder are both decent actors, but they inhabit separate spaces here. It's not necessarily a generation gap problem, although today we're much more sensitive to that than in the days when Audrey Hepburn was wooed and won by Bogart (30 years her senior) in Sabrina, Cooper (28 years) in Love in the Afternoon, and Grant (25 years) in Charade. It may be no coincidence that Ryder sports a Hepburn look here. Perhaps it's just the lack of chemistry between Ryder and Gere that turns everyone against their romance. "Leave her alone," says Stritch. "She's sick. She's really sick." If she's that close to death, what are we saving her from? At least she'll never have to do that tiresome "when I'm fifty he'll be.." math.

There's nothing really offensive about this retread job except the time it wastes. The director is actress-turned filmmaker Joan Chen, who last worked on the Mongolian plains with Xiu-Xiu, the Sent-Down Girl, also about a young girl and an older man. Chen is 39. She should be old enough to remember Steve Stills, and this plot.

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