Welcome to New York (2014)

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Anyone acquainted with the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal that rocked international media would find Welcome to New York interesting. The movie gave us some time in private with the main protagonist, although it's clearly been a work of fiction, as the introductory notes underlined.In this movie the aesthetics of Abel Ferrara were put to gut use. As it usually has been the case with his movies, it was difficult to say whether the look and feel of a TV docudrama was intentional or the budget didn't allow a better postproduction. Either way, it sat well with Welcome to New York. It was a gritty insight into the daily routine of an important man who, after a hard day's work, relaxed in some debauchery.From there we go to a cordial welcome at NYPD until the big international capital intervened and charges were dropped. The last section of the movie, although the least exciting, gave the main protagonist the opportunity to spend some time under house arrest and open his heart. And it wasn't the possibility that both himself and Dominique Strauss-Kahn could have become "the future president of France" that made my stomach turn. It was rather his/theirs inability to perceive any wrongdoing and the unwillingness to repent.

Totally non-believable boring and basically unwatchable. I'm not an apologist for DSK, NYPD, IMF, or the PS but this movie is so far away from reality that its pathetic. Who funds garbage like this? I don't know DSK but I do know he was managing director of the IMF for 4 years as well as holding MANY prestigious posts within the French political system. I find it hard to believe that he travels alone taking yellow cabs to the Airport and is then left in the New York Prison/Court System without getting access to a lawyer and then strip searched? LOL ... Come on now! The scenes are dull lifeless and bland. I know more about DSK from watching a few stupid news clips than I learned from this entire movie. There was NO attempt to develop his character or anyone else's. It seems as though the script writers knew NOTHING about DSK or ANY of the characters in the film. His wife is portrayed as some sort of "backbone" who ran his career? The scene with Bisset and Depardieu was scripted poorly and acted even more poorly if that can even be possible. I'm not the biggest fan of the NYPD either but their depiction in the film was very insulting to them and ME! The guy supposedly rents an apartment for $65k a month but can't get a private car to pick him up at the airport?? I still don't know the real story of what happened with DSK. Its obvious that people in very high places want to destroy the careers of DSK, Depardieu, Bisset, and Ferrara because it certainly shines a pitiful light on all of them.

Even a good cast can not save Welcome to New York from the label of mediocre. The film tells the tale of a lecherous, moneyed Frenchman who is accused of raping a housemaid whilst staying in a ritzy New York Hotel. Gerard Depardieu offers up a reasonable if not exceptional performance as the male lead. His character is a rather revolting, dissipated type who is driven primarily by sex, which he equates with a disease.His character is not that complex and as such, not terribly interesting. By contrast, his long suffering wife, played by Jacqueline Bisset, offers up a passionate performance as a woman driven to pure exasperation and despair by a man she still loves in spite of his conspicuous faults. Its a very personal drama let down by limited character development and the rather stunted story line which leaves the viewer asking what it is they have just witnessed. Indeed, Welcome to New York really amounts to little more than a reiteration of life's realities, that the world is an unfair, unjust place where money makes a huge difference and the dysfunctional go on being dysfunctional.Five out to ten from me.

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society is the real source of the evil.‎ The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital, the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society." - Albert EinsteinIn May of 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, presumptive French presidential candidate and head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), was arrested at JFK airport following an alleged assault on a hotel housemaid. Strauss-Kahn denied violence but admitted "inappropriate" behaviour. The civil suit was later settled out of court. Directed by Abel Ferrara, "Welcome to New York" retells this scandal. It stars Gerard Depardieu as Devereaux (a stand in for Strauss-Kahn), a corpulent corporate-type who spends his days pommelling prostitutes, engaging in casual sexism and gorging on mountains of food. Devereaux, in short, is addicted to pleasure, power and excess. Emblematic of a ruling class which abuses its privileges, exhibits insensitivity toward others and remains protectively cocooned in its ivory towers, Devereaux is shocked when his attack on a lower class black woman gets him arrested. "I have diplomatic immunity!" Devereaux cries. Ferrara's recent films have all been about capitalism, addiction and their overlapping ills. In "Last Day on Earth" this results in ecocide, in "Go Go Tales" this results in a club owner developing gambling addictions in an attempt to "diversify" and "compete" on the market place, and in "R Xmas" a couple of upstart businessmen find their dreams of upward mobility shattered. In "Welcome to New York", we see the "cause" of such collapses and calamities. Entirely without empathy, self-knowledge, forever unable to distinguish between consecration and rape, and viewing everyone and everything as a possession or commodity, Devereaux is the product of a culture which glorifies and normalises sociopathic behaviour. "I don't have feelings," Devereaux tells a psychologist, "I don't give a s**t about the people!" "Welcome" is divided into three clear sections. In the first, we nosedive into Devereaux life of debauchery. Here, sex and nudity are presented without a hint of titillation, and all of Devereaux's sexual rendezvous are sketched as something pathetic and hollow. The film's second section then bluntly contrasts a dehumanising prison system with Devereaux's life of privilege, whilst its third and best segment finds Devereaux consigned to house arrest. During this segment, Jacqueline Bisset steals the show as Devereaux's ex-lover.Though well intentioned, "Welcome to New York" is mostly bad art. The film is packed with clichés, its dialogue is obvious and cringe-worthy, Ferrara's aesthetic is far too literal and the film climaxes with a hokey shot in which Devereaux looks at the camera in a moment of forced and failed profundity. Worse still is Ferrara's disinterest in embedding Devereaux's debauchery within a socio-political context. Ferrara, whose filmography is filled with films about addictions, seems interested in Devereaux only in-so-far as the man is held prisoner by his own body; consumed by consumption. The larger workings of the IMF – responsible for tens of millions of deaths, wars, coups (one currently going on in the Ukraine), the arming of terrorist and far-right groups, indebting countless countries etc – goes ignored. The dubious implication, as with most art which attempts some kind of economic critique, is that our system "works" if only people were a little more compassionate and a lot less greedy. Incidentally, the IMF's "Independent Evaluation Office" has recently admitted that, quote, "the IMF's advocacy of fiscal consolidation proved to be premature for major advanced economies". In short, the IMF is attempting to portray its recent disastrous policies, which saw austerity measures and bank bailouts occurring in most First World nations, as "blunders", rather than entirely deliberate. Many of these Strutural Adjustment Programs, imposed on countries to serve the interests of creditor banks and mega-corporations, were at the time being opposed by Strauss-Kahn, then the IMF's managing director. Judging by history, in which non-compliant types (Scott Ritter, David Kelly, William Colby, Michael Connell etc) are routinely suicided, assassinated, discredited or slandered, it's possible that Strauss-Kahn was framed so as to install a more malleable director. Time will tell. Which is not to say that Strauss-Kahn isn't a giant sleaze-bag, just that he's small fry. The monster runs deep, and its always sacrificing its own priests to keep the game alive.5/10 – See Passolini's "Salo", "Eyes Wide Shut" and Ivory's "The Remains of the Day".