Hotel New York

I saw this film in I think San Francisco or Los Angeles in 1984 at a film festival and was quite surprised at its dopey comedic attempt from a filmmaker trained in the New Wave French cinema of Rohmer, Goddard and Rivette. The film is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of a French film editor Loulou, who comes to New York and has trouble adapting to the culture. It is amusing to see cameos from Gary Indiana as the gay son, who was an art critic for the Village Voice, Sid Geffen (who died in 1988) the owner of Bleecker Street and Carnegie Hall Cinema's who plays the wealthy father who hires Loulou and then seduces her and, of all people, Errol Morris before he became the famed filmmaker who redefined documentary film for his generation.

But the film is totally DOPEY and of no particular consequence and you wonder which writer could script these lines and scenes but ultimately this is Raynal's film. Raynal had been and editor for Eric Rohmer (Sign of Leo) and had connection to the East Village scene of Jonas Mekas and was heralded in the late 60s as a groundbreaking feminist filmmaker. But, "Hotel New York" is no better blocked, visualized, and directed than a beginning undergraduate student film. It struggles to be a French farce or a Woody Allenish tableaux of New York life. And it succeeds at neither.