Autumn In New York

We've seen it all before: Gere as the womanising, slightly introverted hunk and Ryder as the vulnerable doe-eyed little girl. Where such typecasting has claimed commercial and artistic success elsewhere, here it falls flat on its face.

Gere plays Will Keane, a late 40s playboy who falls for the terminally ill, and considerably younger, Charlotte Fielding (Ryder). The two actors lack the on-screen chemistry to make their romance believable, and the anguish felt by Keane over Fielding's illness is just a bit too sudden: one minute he's humping an ex-girlfriend, the next he's tracking down a top heart surgeon for his young sweetheart.

Matters aren't helped by Keane's sappy one-liners. "Man, you don't dance, you float," he earnestly mumbles at the sight of a Charlotte wiggle. At other times his philosophical musings verge on the shatteringly inane - "Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes". Well, quite. Meanwhile Ryder wears pathos like a Fifth Avenue fashion accessory as she curls up, pretty and waif-like on Keane's capacious sofa, and later, naked, in his even more capacious bed.

The glorious, honey-rich photography is one of the film's few graces. New York is golden-hued, Keane's bachelor pad is impeccably lit and the title sequence comprises a breathtaking aerial shot of Central Park. Yet, this fails to belie the plot's implicit, troubling middle-aged male fantasy: to have intercourse with the pretty daughter of the woman desired but never sexually 'claimed' in their youth.

This nauseating scenario is made even less palatable by the quick, staccato editing, resonant of a romantic comedy, not romantic melodrama. And so minimum attention is given to seriously answering the questions: why is Keane a playboy? Why can't he commit? Why does Fielding choose to spend her last few months with a philanderer?