Welcome to New York

Abel Ferrara – 2015 – USA

The pernicious sleaziness of Abel Ferrara would be wearisome and objectionable if he wasn’t such a good filmmaker.  Despite a few ups and downs, he’s mostly upheld a pretty solid track record of uncompromising dramas typically set in New York City’s underbelly.  In this film, an early scene set in a chic but dimly lit hotel room, with Ferrara regulars Paul Hipp and Paul Calderon groping and slavering over a pair of prostitutes, announces that the director of Ms. 45 (1981) and Bad Lieutenant (1992) is still alive and kicking.  Welcome to New York is a film à clef unambiguously patterned on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal of 2011, with Gérard Depardieu playing Strauss-Kahn as a man named ‘Devereaux,’ a thoughtless, lecherous monster whose wealth allows him to bully and bluster his way from one sloppy exploitation of women to another without consequence.  One day it slips his mind that there may be women in the world who don’t love being tackled by fat, nude men old enough to be their grandfathers.  This traumatized hotel maid complains and within hours Devereaux finds himself in a perpetual state of blunt annoyance and confusion as he is arrested and processed by New York police.  What I found striking about the film is Ferrara’s relentless misanthropy, so undiluted after all these years.  Anyone else would – (almost by default) – tend to elicit some empathy either for Devereaux as he is jostled about and mocked by uncaring cops, or for the police as they attempt to bring this loathsome man to justice.  But instead it’s like watching ants dispassionately and methodically dismantle a dead insect and convey its pieces to their hive.  Everyone is just mindlessly doing what they do – whether it’s shoving people into jail cells or sexually molesting unsuspecting women – with nothing ever giving them pause or inspiring a moment of reflection or altering their perspectives for better or worse.  Add to all this the repellent sight of a fully nude Depardieu in several lingering medium shots, and you’ve got some pretty grim proceedings on your hands.