And who doesn't love The Big Apple? In a series of overlapping love stories all set in New York City, eleven directors and a huge, star-studded cast range from Central Park to Chinatown, the Village, the Upper East Side and Coney Island, all in search of what makes the heart beat faster. It turns out the city that never sleeps never stops pining either. In the Diamond District, a young Hasidic bride (Natalie Portman) negotiates with a Jain man from India (Irrfan Khan) over a diamond purchase, each flirting with the other's culture and finding surprising common ground. In a cramped downtown apartment, a musician (Orlando Bloom) rushes to finish a soundtrack for an animated film. The director, through an intermediary, keeps pushing him to read Dostoevsky. And when that intermediary (Christina Ricci) turns up on his doorstep, Russian literature suddenly comes alive. And so it goes, one lovely sliver of love after another, some of them overlapping. Ethan Hawke turns in a firecracker performance as a sidewalk romancer, trying to lure a gorgeous woman (Maggie Q) from the curb to his apartment. Two lovers rush to meet for the first time after a one-night stand, each anxious with nerves. Anton Yelchin plays a guy who finds his last-minute prom date (Olivia Thilby) to be full of surprises. And in one of the film's most haunting stories, the magnificent Julie Christie plays a famous opera singer who returns to her favourite Manhattan hotel. She's brought not just her luggage, but her baggage too. Like a collection of New Yorker stories, some of the sequences in New York, I Love You carry gratifying twists, while others simply capture telling moments. The directors of this omnibus film are a global bunch. New York has never had it so good. Cameron Bailey