Very New York, very Jewish, very of its time, 1988’s Crossing Delancey seems to divide opinion sharply. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is largely in favour, though back in the day Roger Ebert wasn’t so keen (“not good enough,” said the usually fair-minded Ebert).
It’s often billed as a rom-com, which is like calling Hamlet a comedy because it has the gravedigger in it. No, it’s a romance, a romantic drama, plain and simple, a genre that often has to fly under a flag of convenience.
Plot: pretty but no longer quite so young Izzi works at New York’s most bookstore bookstore, where she’s in charge of looking after the writers who turn up to give readings. The latest one is Anton Maes, a European sophisticate, handsome devil, poetry-quoting guy who looks like he’s going to be the romantic focus of this movie, since tortured artists of one sort or another, especially ones in a relationship fix (he’s in the process of splitting acrimoniously from his wife), are the meat and drink of romance.
Instead, enter Izzi’s grandmother, Bubbie, Bubbie’s matchmaker friend Hannah, and their interfering pick for Izzi, a likeable spaniel-eyed guy who has taken over the running of a pickle business from his dear old dad.
On the one hand the commanding European intellectual, on the other the everyday Jewish pickle guy. Mr Global versus Mr Local. The new versus the old. Progress and tradition.
Susan Sandler’s screenplay then pings Izzi from one to the other, asking which one it is going to be. Neither Anton nor Sam is fleshed out enough to fully count as a character, and Izzi sails perilously close to unlikeability as she dicks the guys about by favouring first one, then the other. Anton is fair game, he can take a bit of romantic stress-testing because he’s a player. But stop stringing Sam along, for god’s sake.
And yet it works. Because Amy Irving is a plausibly conflicted Izzi. Because she’s pretty. Because Izzi’s beef with the two old dears interfering in her life is understandable. Most of all it works because of the two old dears. Reizl Bozyk plays Bubbie, the wise, mischievous grandmother, an actress who made very few screen performances in a professional life full of Yiddish theatre. Sylvia Miles plays matchmaker, busybody and loudmouth Hannah Mandelbaum. Bozyk gets the screentime and is warm and wise and funny but Miles brings the fireworks every time she turns up. Vulgar, helmet-haired Hannah is comedy gold.
Ebert’s beef against the Sam character is justified – there’s not much for actor Peter Riegert to get his teeth into. There’s only so many ways you can play dependable without starting to look boring. Jeroen Krabbé doesn’t get much more to work with as the charming Anton, playing him as smug and entitled. We do not root for Anton, attractive though he is in many ways.
This film came out a year before When Harry Met Sally, and though that’s a rom-com, this shares many of its attributes and its underlying warmth. It also has a soft spot for New York, in that Woody Allen way, and director Joan Micklin Silver shoots out on the streets to paint a vivid picture of a multicultural city of hot dogs and boomboxes, bustling, dog-eared shops and well used markets.
Plus the bookstore, which seems to employ at least four people (one of them is played by David Hyde Pierce) though there aren’t that many customers. It’s the same place as, give or take, we got to see in You’ve Got Mail a few years later. Urbane and civilised, its owner (George Martin) the sort of guy who is a clubbable father figure and fully expects you to go out and have a long lunch.
It’s all very familiar and along with the “oy vay” stereotypes, the vaguely implausible vibe, the underwritten men and the stock situation, makes it easy to dismiss. Familiar can be OK though. This is OK.
Crossing Delancey – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
