Quik Flix Hit

In a New York Minute (2019)

Unrated

A separate but interlocking tripartite exploration of loves and losses of Chinese and Chinese-American women in the big city, In a New York Minute works best when it draws us into the lives of it desperate characters. The plots themselves are warmed-over bowls of American rom-com soup. Thankfully, each tale, roughly 25 minutes each, lends most of its time to the development of the women, not the plot. And the three main actresses are more than up to the challenges of engaging the audience and carrying their stories.

Amy (Amy Chang) is an admired city food editor unable to eat in the wake of a devastating breakup. She skulks about her small apartment, goes through the motions of her job, which is admittedly more difficult now that she pukes anytime she tries to eat. She gets an unexpected opportunity to act on food-related television series and an unexpected suitor in a charming but relentless coworker. Despite his overbearing nature, Peter actually helps nurse Amy back to her appetite. He soon proposes, and poor Amy is so adrift she neglects to reject the offer. Chang’s performance is palpable. Her hangdog  Amy is crushed on the inside and Chang effectively plays her as a woman barely keeping herself together.

In the second story we met Angel (Yi Liu). Actually, we’ve already met her as she crossed paths with Amy in the first story—we just didn’t realize it at the time. Angel is an actress and wife of a much older American, Howard (Erik Lochtefeld), who seems to regard his Chinese wife and her culture as fascinating diversions, but doesn’t implore much effort to actually understand her or it. He nods through conversations while hardly looking up from his books. Note a key scene when Howard’s children from his previous marriage visit for dinner. Angel all but disappears amid their discussions about Japanese culture and cuisine. Liu is masterful at presenting Angel’s quiet devastation. In China, Angel had built a reputation as an actress. In New York, acting is a humiliating slog that Howard encourages mainly as a means to give his wife something to do with her time. It’s not hard to image why Angel turned to an affair with the young, handsome David (Ludi Lin), a writer. The lovers have afternoon and evening trysts at his apartment. Theirs are joyous couplings of sex and interesting dialogues and the unending possibilities of young love. Her time with David buoys her in her listless marriage, but Angel struggles to decide if she wants a future filled with love or security. Just as her acting opportunities pick up with a film that somewhat parallels her own life (and brings her in proximity of Amy), the results of a home pregnancy test threatens to derail all opportunities—marriage, affair and career.

Lastly, we meet Nina (Celia Au), an escort of sorts, whose services are bought by mostly older, moneyed men. She has eyes for Ian (Roger Yeh), a kind food-truck operator who dreams of opening his own restaurant, but can’t see a viable way forward in their relationship. Her father and stepmother run a small Pho restaurant (which also appears in Amy and Angel’s stories) and have paid a fortune to bring Nina to the U.S. She is indebted to the family that cares little about her life’s desires or opportunities. Au plays Nina as hard-edged, a survivor, who at first scoffs at the probability of real love, and later fights to embrace her chance at a life with Ian. In continuing the unnecessary crossover gimmick, two of Nina’s clients are Peter and David, from Amy and Angel’s stories respectively; worse is the home pregnancy test, which works its way into each tale, but is truly only important in Angel’s story.

Director Ximan Li, though, slyly allows moments of crossover—Amy lives in the same apartment building as David, Angel’s lover; while filming the TV series, Amy is surreptitiously replaced by Angel—then pulls the threads together in a final act that allows plotlines to converge. Amy’s story is the strongest, with her quietly flailing under the weight of grief; Angel’s, which navigates a marriage, an affair, an acting career and a pregnancy is the most complicated; Nina’s is the most heartbreaking, with her dogged efforts for a life of independence and love crumbling before her eyes.

While the plot approach of In a New York Minute is nothing new, Li’s film nevertheless, transcends its soapy America episodic structure and allows the Asian cast, crew and writers to provide a refreshing cultural take on the material. Mego Lin’s camera gloriously captures New York cityscapes and charming neighborhoods. Like chapters in a book, each story is given lengthy first acts to allow us to imbibe the rhythms of the lives of these Asian characters. There are minutes worth savoring.

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive