On Friday, “Union Square” came to Houston Street: Nancy Savoca’s movie about estranged sisters who hash out their differences in an airy Union Square apartment opened at Angelika. The film is set just outside of the East Village: at one point, the more high-strung of the siblings, who runs a health food company not entirely unsimilar to actual Union Square company One Lucky Duck, gives her address as 886 Broadway, which would put her in the W & J Sloane Building, between 18th and 19th Streets. No wonder her sister thinks her place is “crazy awesome.”
Most of the “action” takes place inside this loft as the brash and boisterous Lucy (played by Mira Sorvino), who’s in the neighborhood to shop for tacky bags at Filene’s Basement (R.I.P.), tries to reconnect with the crunchy, cloistered Jenny (Tammy Blanchard), a vegan convert who’s so ashamed of her Bronx roots, her rough-around-the-edges Italian-American family, and her secret past as a (gasp!) smoker that she tells her hunky fiancée that she’s from Maine.
As The Times notes in its review, the movie is fairly theatrical in its contained setting and dramatic conversation. But perhaps the best bit of dialogue happens to be ad-libbed, and involves Andrew Cote, the beekeeper who a couple of months ago helped out with that Bowery swarm and then relocated some Central Park bees to the Sixth Street Community Center. Read more…
