Crossing Delancey

Crossing Delancey is a fairly uncomplicated romantic comedy that is heavily grounded in specific realities of the Jewish communities and subcultures of New York City around the end of the 1980s, when it was made. Even the title is a reference to the geographic landmarks most relevant to this world, with Delancey Street being well known for its Jewish delis, bakeries, and businesses. In a way, Crossing Delancey is sort of a Jewish precursor to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with a deep dive into a very narrow world of not just dating, but dating in a particularly ethnic/religious group with inflexible traditions and familial expectations. Unlike My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Crossing Delancy is more interested in the question of how she finds the one, rather than how the one she finds copes.

In that regard, the movie is somewhat a slave to its genre’s tropes, as arguably all films of this type are, but it handles them with the aesthetic and attitude of a 90s indie film, which leaves it feeling like a softer Kissing Jessica Stein or less madcap Puccini for Beginners rather than bigger budget You’ve Got Mail type. Izzy, our hero, is getting older and is under immense pressure from her grandmother to settle down, get married, and start a family. Izzy, of course, prefers focusing on her job at an important bookstore in downtown Manhattan that lets her hob knob with literary titans, and fulfills her carnal needs through unfulfilling sex with a married artsy hippie type who lives in her building. Cue a montage of heart to hearts with a girl best friend, a re-evaluation of priorities, and an emerging love triangle of sorts. All fairly standard stuff.

What I really enjoyed about the movie is how those relationships play out. While the guy she doesn’t end up with turns out to be a bit of a pseudo-intellectual and a pig (not uncommon tropes for resolving a romcom love triangle), the guy she does end up with is just a good guy, who is thoughtful, and there for her. There aren’t the grand theatrics of the likes of Pretty Woman or the confession speeches of the likes of Notting Hill, even though I love all those movies. This ends up feeling much more grounded and real, like the model for the beginnings of a real, healthy, lasting relationship.

Izzy is also a flawed and unhappy character, which too often these films don’t do when it’s a female lead. If a man is the protagonist, they must figure out that they are wasting their life away on things that don’t matter and course correct, a la Knocked Up, but too often if a woman is the protagonist, she has her life well put together and it’s about which of her myriad options is right for her, a la Sweet Home Alabama. This, too, gives it a more grounded feel while also subverting a genre trope in an enjoyable way. Izzy is not a mess, but she definitely needs work. Her love life is empty, her fawning over literary intellectuals through work is unhealthy, and her priorities, time management, and treatment of others is often shambolic. It is not just a search for love, but a search for a better version of herself that leads to accepting love, that drives the story and that feels like much stronger, richer material than many more frivolous fare.

I’m not sure I would recommend this movie to all romantic comedy lovers. If what you really enjoy is the exciting, butterflies in your stomach feeling of passion realized, often exclusively at the beginning of a romance, and you want a movie to fill you with dreams of this kind of thing happening to you, this isn’t really going to deliver. If you’ve been around the block a few times more, and know that those theatrics either don’t work the way you expect, or don’t last, Crossing Delancey offers a much smaller, more intimate, more real take on the classic romantic comedy formula.

Would Recommend: If the idea of receiving a thoughtful hat as an unprompted gift makes your bits tingle.

Would Not Recommend: If your favorite part of the movie is the big romantic gesture at the end.