Allswell in New York
by Matt Weiner
A standout cast with grounded performances alongside a soufflé of light but surmountable tension—all the ingredients are there for a breezy, comforting hit.
And Allswell in New York has its moments. The film shines as an ensemble piece with its three leads: sisters Ida (a sparkling and newly Emmy-winning Liza Colón-Zayas) and Daisy (Elizabeth Rodriguez, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Ben Snyder), and their sister-in-law Serene (Daphne Rubin-Vega).
Allswell follows the three Nuyorican women and the ups and downs of midlife in New York. Daisy is welcoming a surrogate into her life, a young woman throwing out so many red flags that it feels almost offensive to Daisy’s intelligence when she is shocked by an inevitable twist.
Serene’s daughter Constance (Shyrley Rodriguez) is worrying her mother sick with a shady “modeling” career. And nurse Ida has trouble at work trying to help her good friend and coworker stay out of trouble for stealing rapid STD tests to help the poor. (This sets up a recurring theme where Ida’s main conflict is that she is just too much of a saint. It’s a thankless role compared to what the other women go through, but then that’s why you get Colón-Zayas to make it exciting and give the character more depth than her struggle suggests.)
When Serene’s long-absent husband, Desmond (Felix Solis)—and Ida and and Daisy’s brother—shows up at Ida’s clinic looking deeply unwell, the family’s tensions and long-simmering grudges come to a head.
If it all sounds soapy, much of it is. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except it ends up being at odds with both the affecting naturalistic turns from the leading women and, perhaps even more intractable, a tight runtime that leaves no room to explore the less stock sides of these women.
One striking example is the titular Allswell, a restaurant co-owned by Daisy that serves as a central meeting place. There’s an entire subplot with a barely used Bobby Cannavale that could’ve been its own movie. But the same goes for most of whatever glimpses we get of the peripheries of these women’s lives.
Rodriguez, Colón-Zayas and Rubin-Vega all invest so much in these women, and it’s a credit to their performances that we can fill in so much of their lives when the story itself doesn’t seem to want to spend any more time with them than is necessary for exposition. It’s not that the time spent at Allswell is unpleasant. But it does leave you wishing you could’ve ordered just a little bit more.
