Falling curse to the dreaded cinematic "sophomore slump," the second feature film from actress-turned-director Joan Chen pales in comparison to her acclaimed debut, Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998). Script problems plague Autumn in New York (2000), not the least of which is a male lead character, Will Keane (Richard Gere), that pinwheels with abandon from philandering cad to bachelor with a heart of gold, and a female lead, Charlotte Fielding (Winona Ryder), who's nearly a total cipher. (One example of the latter: much is made of Fielding earning a living by crafting expensive, artsy hats, a plot device that is quickly dropped and never mentioned again.) A story that never coheres and unmotivated characters portrayed by a pair of stars whose chemistry never quite gels does not add up to a successful romance on any level. Autumn in New York doesn't live up to its chief pretension: to be a classic, doomed-romance tearjerker on the level of Love Story (1970).
