"Lost in New York" happened by chance when director Rollin had the possibility to visit New York with only 2 actresses coming along. The rather spontaneously shot footage he brought home to France was extended by shots on the pebble beach familiar to all Rollin fans. The film thus completed to a length of almost an hour tells us about two young girls who imagine they might be grown up and see New York, later to meet again with their memories as old women, returning to their days of youth. The circular traveling across space and time is done with a magical device, a round wooden thing called Moon Goddess, also impersonated by a dancer, an actress you may remember from "Emmanuelle 6". What makes "Lost in New York" so fascinating is that it is a very open, personal movie, unlike "The Living Dead Girl" for example which needed to satisfy certain expectations of the particular audience it was aimed at. "Lost in New York" is a dream movie, adding up Rollin's artistic visions more freely than other works of his, so that I would actually count it among his five best films. You can let yourself go in the flow of images which are rarely interrupted by dialogs. In opposite to a movie like "Koyaanisqatsi" though, "Lost in New York" does not hit you with a message. Instead you create a viewpoint for yourself: is it magic or just their imagination, which is present or past, which is reality? Obviously, even my summary above contains a good deal of interpretation already. Certainly not a movie for everybody, but if you like to be challenged a bit, try an interpretation of "Lost in New York" in your own way.
Review of Perdues dans New York
