There are Farrow & Ball paint charts with more inherent drama than My New York Year, an enervating adaptation of Joanna Rakoff’s 2014 memoir, My Salinger Year. Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) directs and Margaret Qualley stars as aspiring writer Joanna, who finds work assisting grande dame literary agent Margaret (Sigourney Weaver). Margaret’s main client is JD Salinger; Joanna’s duties include shredding his fanmail and replying with a crisply dismissing pro forma response that hasn’t been updated since the late 60s.
But just as Salinger’s literature touches the lives of his fans, their heartfelt words (spoken to camera in clunky vignettes) connect with Joanna, incrementally inching her towards dumping her overconfident talent vacuum of a boyfriend and following her dream. It’s all perfectly pleasant, with polite pacing and a smothering, over-solicitous score. But any film that can take an actor as sparky as Qualley and deliver a character with the personality of a damp dishcloth wrapped in a cardigan is seriously underusing its year in New York.
