Welcome to New York

Film Review by Josh Slater-Williams | 04 Aug 2014
Film title: Welcome to New York
Director: Abel Ferrara
Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset, Marie Moute, Pamela Afesi, Paul Calderon
Release date: 8 Aug
Certificate: 18

Abel Ferrara’s blunt-force Welcome to New York is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of the sexual assault incident that disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, one that posits its lead as indisputably guilty of the crime. As Devereaux, Gérard Depardieu gives a warts, balls and all performance as a brutish sex addict, whose standing in wealth and power have fuelled a complete removal from contemporary morality.

Despite punishment for the attempted rape of a maid, and the subsequent decimation of his planned political pursuits, he is unrepentant. In one of three fourth-wall-breaking moments, Devereaux looks right at the audience and mutters, “They can all go fuck themselves.”

His wife (Bisset) is understandably sick of his shit, but Ferrara’s film, compelling in bursts in its first half, proves taxing as it lumbers on. Heavy on pompous monologues, the second of its two hours sheds little further light on its protagonist’s monstrous behaviour, and a hollow late attempt to shape Devereaux into a typical Ferrara anti-hero (e.g. King of New York) doesn’t gel. 

http://www.wildbunch.biz/films/welcome_to_new_york