It's hard to think of a director as ill-suited to the job of filming Tama Janowitz's whimsical brat-pack hit Slaves of New York as James Ivory, whose films with Ismail Merchant are notable as much for their fatal neglect of the rudiments of film pacing as for their habitual attention to
decor. Ivory's lack of structure and timing has never been more apparent than in SLAVES OF NEW YORK; forsaking the Victorian drawing rooms of A ROOM WITH A VIEW to wander the mean streets of New York's East Village, he seems to view his characters and their dilemmas as sociological oddities to be
ogled in a tour of bohemia, and leaves them sadly underdeveloped. The story focuses on the destructive relationship between Eleanor (Bernadette Peters), an aspiring milliner, and Stash (Adam Coleman Howard), the churlish young painter to whom Eleanor is a "slave." An assortment of dealers,
designers, Japanese photographers, and hangers-on create more problems for the pair before Eleanor finally breaks free of Stash's demeaning influence. Peters is irritatingly miscast, and most of Ivory's typically eclectic cast is wasted in stereotyped cameo roles.
