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Amy Irving Answers Every Question We Have About Crossing Delancey
The Jewish rom-com is finally joining the Criterion Collection, and according to Irving, “Peter and I have thought of sequels.”
Crossing Delancey wears itself lightly, but it tends to run heavy, asking questions about Jewish culture and tradition versus modernity and love and attraction and how to get the smell of pickles off of one’s hands at the end of the day (vanilla and milk). Much of that can be attributed to its script, adapted by playwright Susan Sandler from her play of the same name, and its assured direction by the late Joan Micklin Silver, the mind behind Hester Street and Chilly Scenes of Winter. Made on a $4 million budget, it eventually grossed $16 million, and though it didn’t quite hit with male critics (the Washington Post ’sHal Hinson wrote that “the filmmaker’s heart is in the right place”), it was better understood by the few female critics writing at the time, like the L.A. Times ’ Sheila Benson, who compared it to the previous year’s hit Moonstruck, calling it “a love poem to all New York.” It’s since been embraced as something of a New York rom-com classic, a status that will be cemented by its addition to the Criterion Collection on February 18.
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