Slaves Of New York

It's hard to think of a director as ill-suited to the job of filming Tama Janowitz's whimsical brat-pack hit Slaves of New York as James Ivory, whose films with Ismail Merchant are notable as much for their fatal neglect of the rudiments of film pacing as for their habitual attention to decor. Ivory's lack of structure and timing has never been more apparent than in SLAVES OF NEW YORK; forsaking the Victorian drawing rooms of A ROOM WITH A VIEW to wander the mean streets of New York's East Village, he seems to view his characters and their dilemmas as sociological oddities to be ogled in a tour of bohemia, and leaves them sadly underdeveloped. The story focu...