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A Couch In New York

1996, Movie, R, 104 mins

A Couch In New York: Review

COUCH IN NEW YORK, A | UN DIVAN A NEW YORK
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More screwy than screwball, Belgian director Chantal Akerman's neurotic comedy of assumed identities is an uneasy blend of old-fashioned American romantic comedy, Freud and a distinctly European art-house sensibility. The couch in question belongs to Dr. Henry Harriston (William Hurt), an austere Manhattan psychoanalyst who swaps his swank, fully automated Upper East Side apartment for the funky Paris digs of dancer Beatrice Saulnier (Juliette Binoche), an irrepressible gamine who answers Henry's apartment exchange ad in the International Herald Tribune. Quickly fed up with leaky pipes and the endless parade of Beatrice's despondent admirers, Henry cuts short his Paris adventure and returns to New York, where he learns that Beatrice has taken over his apartment and his practice. Henry makes an appointment with "Dr." Saulnier under an assumed name, but before he can confront her directly, he discovers that not only is she a pretty good therapist, but he's also fallen in love with her. It's a wonderful premise, just the sort of thing a director like Stanley Donen -- or even Woody Allen -- might have fashioned into a real charmer. But Akerman (who gained international attention with her fascinatingly numbing JEANNE DIELMAN, a 3 1/2 hour portrait of a Brussels housewife-cum-prostitute) isn't that kind of director. After a promising start, she never quite catches the brisk rhythm light romantic comedy demands, and this tiresome film becomes bogged down hopelessly in dull meditations on character, communication and -- almost as an afterthought -- love. Hurt is irritatingly dour, but Binoche is lovely: There may be something to all those Audrey Hepburn comparisons after all. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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