AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

by Peter Keough

What can you say about a beautiful young girl who dies? Not much -- the premise was trite 60 years ago when they made Dark Victory, and it didn't get any fresher 30 years ago with Love Story. Autumn in New York tries to juice up the clichés by making the conflict here age rather than class (as it was in Love Story) and by bringing on Joan Chen, whose first film was the haunting Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, to direct. Which means the film is not poignant and elegant but creepy and slow. And, of course, corny.

Will (Richard Gere) is a pushing-50 Manhattan restaurateur notorious for his womanizing. Charlotte (Winona Ryder) is a 22-year-old gamine who designs hats. They fall in love, but the catch isn't so much that she's the daughter of one of Will's former, conveniently deceased flames (the incest angle is covered by a weird subplot involving the return of Will's actual abandoned daughter) as that she's got a movie disease and has only a year to live. As Will's best friend (played by a crusty Anthony LaPaglia) points out, the relationship is a microcosm of all love, because "somebody always gets left behind." It could also be seen as the last gasp of patriarchal pitifulness. Instead, we get two hours of Gere preening and whining and Ryder giggling and sobbing over Chen's tasteful autumnal visuals. Once again, love in Hollywood means sorry-ass platitudes and cheapened sentiment. At Cinema World, Entertainment Cinemas, Gardner, the Hoyt Westborough, Leominster, Maynard Fine Arts, Natick, the Solomon Pond Hoyt, White City, and the Worcester North Showcase.