The streets of Dublin, his hometown, led John Carney to success. They housed the loves of a guitarist and a singer, the heroes of Once, sentimental and musical comedy. Seven years later, the Irish filmmaker undoubtedly said that by going from an average city to a megalopolis, New York, while keeping the recipe, the success would be proportional to the size of the setting. But New York Melody keeps all the sweet and mundane promises of its title, and nothing more. There will be music and love, it’s true, beautiful feelings too and very pretty actors, starting with Keira Knightley, but for emotions and authenticity, we will have to look elsewhere.
We discover Gretta (Knightley) in a New York folk club, when a singer-songwriter invites her to succeed her on stage. She balks then agrees to perform a sad song that is not really over. In the room, a guy in his forties smiles ecstatically.
By dint of looking back we will know that Gretta arrived from England in the company of a rock star, who happened to be her boyfriend, Dave Kohl (Adam Levine, in the civilian singer of Maroon 5), and that he- Ci just ditched it. The delighted-looking guy is Dan Mulligan (Mark Ruffalo), he claims to be artistic director of a record label. An intense review of Dan’s biography tells us that he in fact founded a prestigious record company in the company of Saul (Mos Def, who forms with Ruffalo a couple supposed to recall the founders of Def Jam, Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin) , but that the latter has just dismissed him, due to his alcoholism. Dan is also a very bad ex-husband (Catherine Keener gets the thankless role of ex) and an even worse father (of Violet, played by Hailee Steinfeld). It’s because he’s drinking.
So let’s summarize: a solitary young woman whose talent is not recognized, an alcoholic family man in a situation of professional failure. For John Carney, it takes an hour and a half to get these little people back on track, thanks to a brilliant idea: Dan will produce an album of Gretta’s songs, recorded in the streets of New York. To get there, they will encounter as many material obstacles as Judie Garland and Mickey Rooney when they felt the urge to mount a musical in an MGM production.
Admittedly, the download film deals with the devastation inflicted by digital technology on the music industry, but all these problems are foreign to the enchanted world of our heroes, in which all you have to do is sit on a terrace to record, to refuse a drink to stop drinking. There is a naivety there which is almost charming. For it to be quite so, in addition to endearing actors, the music would have to evoke something other than lukewarm syrup and that the staging mobilizes other means than the pseudo-documentary clichés dear to foreigners who film New York.
American film by John Carney, with Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine. (1h44)
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