All the Vermeers in New York (1992)

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Jon Jost shoots a little New York film, and bores the hell out of America.

The central story centers around French actress Anna (Emmanuelle Chaulet) falling for Wall Street money man Mark (Stephen Lack). Their courtship begins in the Vermeer room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Mark passes Anna a note. She meets him later with her roommate Felicity (Grace Phillips), who pretends to translate for Anna. Mark pursues her until Anna decides to go back to France with Felicity, and Mark finally confesses his love in a tragic phone call.

Yawn. This slow moving film (pushed and hyped by Premiere Magazine back in the day) is so boring I took three days to watch the eighty-seven minute thing. The central story takes forever. There are subplots that are brought up and dropped worse than any other film I have ever seen. Gordon (Gordon Joseph Weiss), the poor artist trying to borrow money from a gallery owner? Dropped. Felicity's dad using her name to make possibly illegal stock transactions? Dropped. Felicity and Anna's constantly rehearsing roommate? Dropped. The best scenes in the film involve Stephen Lack as Mark. All of his scenes crackle, and he does some excellent ad-libs. His scene on one of the World Trade Center towers, as he talks about death while a jet plane can be heard over head -this was released in 1990- is creepy and fascinating. He held back too much in "Scanners," but here he is the only reason to sit through this muck.

"All the Vermeers in New York" is like Woody Allen on his worst day- yes, it's as bad as "September" and "Alice." I wish Jost could have given us more, not bore.

Stats:
(1992) 87 min. (*) out of five stars
-Written and Directed by Jon Jost
-Cast: Emmanuelle Chaulet, Stephen Lack, Grace Phillips, Katie Garner, Laurel Lee Kiefer, Gracie Mansion, Gordon Joseph Weiss, Roger Ruffin
(Not Rated)