Crossing Delancey

1989, Warner Home Video Inc.

The Roches provide a number of songs for the soundtrack of this film. If you can't find the Crossing Delancy soundtrack album, then get this video for the music. Even if you get the album, get this video to see Suzzy. Suzzy has a small part and appears in several scenes -- and she is good! I'd like to see her act more often -- but only if it doesn't interfere with her songwriting and singing.

Oh, the movie isn't bad either. It is a sweet love story in which the main character, played by Amy Irving, finds her true love in the traditional Jewish community that she has ignored while pursuing a "modern" career life.


From the back of the box:

Single, attractive, 30-somthing Isabelle ("Izzy") Grossman has a rent-controlled apartment in uptown Manhattan and a burgeoning career in publishing. "I'm happy," she says. "She lives alone in a room, like a dog," counters Bubbie, her tradition-minded grandmother. So Bubbie hires a matchmaker who finds Izzy a marriage prospect: a man who runs a street-side pickle stand.

Izzy is appalled. Is the man who offers "a joke and a pickle for only a nickel" her Mr. Right? And will she somehow, someway end up Crossing Delancey -- the street that divides her world from his -- and find love?

Amy Irving (Yentl, Micki & Maude) stars as Izzy in this glowing, feel-good comedy. "What particularly fascinated me," Irving says about the role, "is the plight of the independent, single woman of the '80s in contrast with the accepted family traditions that have come down through the generations."

Irving's radiant performance may be her best to date. Surrounding her is a cast that knows how to make comic sparks fly when old-world ways rub against new-world woes: Peter Riegert (Local Hero) as the pickle man, Jeroen Krabbe (The Living Daylights) as his rival and Sylvia Miles (Wall Street) as the matchmaker. And after an exhasutive international search, ebullient Bubbie was found on New York's Lower East Side where Crossing Delancey itself unforlds. Seventy-four-year-old movie newcomer Reizl Bozyk, a stage performer since childhood, portrays Bubbie, snapping off one-liners... and stealing scenes.

"Ya look, ya meet, ya try, ya see," chimes the matchmaker. She should add, "You'll love it!" Crossing Delancey is the giddy romantic charmer you've been waiting for."