Annu Subramanian

I love New York. I’d like to think that New York loves me too. But it seems that there are conflicting views on whether the city, with its sprawling avenues and bright lights, is very conducive to love itself.

This Friday, the much-awaited second installment in the short-film montage series about love in big cities premieres, and this one takes place in none other than the Big Apple. New York, I Love You is the sequel to the highly acclaimed French anthology film Paris, Je’Taime. It consists of eleven short, independent movies about love in the city, and if it is anything like its predecessor, will make any single girl want to quit her job, move to a metropolitan area and sit in a downtown park waiting for a handsome man to whisk her away. I can’t wait to watch the movie and fall in love eleven times as well as see NYC onscreen and portrayed in so many different ways. And with an all-star cast (including Zach Braff and Bradley Cooper, with whom I’d gladly fall in love a thousand times over), love has never looked so good.

Now if only the city were really that romantic.

This article makes love in the city that never sleeps seem like quite a nightmare. Apparently nowadays holding onto a relationship is either a borough-exclusive phenomenon, or a huge pain in the neck. What I find most interesting about this is the fact that a long-distance relationship in NYC might imply a couple where the man lives in Brooklyn and the woman in Manhattan. The directors of New York, I Love You probably didn’t factor gridlock traffic into their picture-esque depictions of couples smitten in Soho and embracing on Ellis Island but maybe they should have; the point of these urban anthology films is to be at least a little true-to-life. All of this complaining about an hour-long commute makes me think that romantic sayings like “I’d follow you to the ends of the Earth” are probably dead but hey, it gives rise to a whole new class of cheesy pick-up lines like:

"Baby I’d make three transfers from the F to the N to the D train just to B with U."

"No man is an island, so won’t you take the commute to the Hamptons to keep me company?"

"I can treat you like royalty at my pad in Queens."

Perhaps even:

"I’d love you even if you moved to Jersey."

Yeah, I went there.