Here is the second Spanish article about “NY, I Love You”. This one has some nice quotes from Natalie. Below is an excerpt but use the click through to view the full translation.
“There were many problems, but of all the challenges, the most important was the weather: it changed forty times in just two days of shooting! My director of photography, Jean-Louis had a heart attack every three minutes because of it. But our cast including Carlos, who had never acted professionally, Jacinda, who appeared immediately, from Australia, and Taylor, who is six, were perfect, inventive and authentic, they contributed so that the struggle with the weather was much less frightening.”
This weekend, both in the United States and Spain, the choral film “New York, I love you” opens, the new instalment in the “cities and love” saga that began with “Paris, je t’aime” and we already know that a third one will be included: “Rio, I love you”. To tell romantic stories related to the “Big Apple”, they have gathered works from known directors such as Fatih Akin, Shekhar Kapur, Joshua Marston, Mira Nair, and Brett Ratner, but also a signature segment from Israeli actress Natalie Portman, in her first foray behind the camera, which she qualifies as a “great opportunity” because it gave the advantage of taking a chance in a format more or less “light” such as a short and without the limitations…“The opportunity,” – explains Princess Amidala of the Star Wars saga – was advantageous to try to address a short in a very singular structure that has its audience. Currently, there are too many shorts that seem to be relegated to darkness. I love the concept of “Paris, je t’aime” and “New York, I love you” because they offer a very open way so that artists can contribute their very different first impressions of a city from various positions of advantage, all stories of love.”
Portman chose one – “written by herself” – taking place in Central Park (each director has placed theirs in a specific part of the city of skyscrapers). There, on a sunny afternoon in the park fountain, a white girl (Taylor Geare) plays with her attentive black “minder”(Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta), but when the day ends and the “minder” returns the girl to her mother (Jacinda Barrett), a sudden fit of passion demonstrates that superficial appearances are not always what they seem.
The star of films such as “Beautiful Girls”, “V for Vendetta,” “Star Wars” or “Closer,” had already participated as an actress in “Paris, I love you” (short for Tom Tykwer), and now again was required for the New York version as an actress, which was made by Mira Nair, but also-according to the producer of the series, Emmanuel Benbihy- she proposed to assume the leadership of another one.
Benbihy explains that he was very impressed with the script that Portman presented: “She’s a wonderful screenwriter. Her characters were well developed and the story is totally sweet and emotional.”
But not everything was plain sailing for Natalie’s short in Central Park. Not counting on the bad weather, as their story unfolded outdoors in its entirety and the fact of having a girl in the cast and an inexperienced actor (Acosta) in addition to radical changes in the weather and ambient light. “There were many problems, but of all the challenges, the most important was the weather: it changed forty times in just two days of shooting! My director of photography, Jean-Louis had a heart attack every three minutes because of it. But our cast including Carlos, who had never acted professionally, Jacinda, who appeared immediately, from Australia, and Taylor, who is six, were perfect, inventive and authentic, they contributed so that the struggle with the weather was much less frightening.”
