After watching Notice to Quit, I was reminded of a twee-type of New York-centric media that proliferated in the city’s post-Bloomberg era. The New York depicted in this media was upbeat, free, but elegantly disheveled. It was an audacious style that percolated into music and fashion (the kids call this “indie sleaze”), short films for streaming companies and a whole slew of raunchy, irony-pilled sitcoms. Through this projection, the city of New York seemed to subordinate itself to the creative musings of a very specific range of city dwellers: eccentric yuppies, transplants, hipsters, and twenty-something day-dreamers.
In recent years, however, this smooth if hollow vision of New York has dulled into cynicism. Nowadays, the city portrayed over television and social media is one that is obliterated, decadent and besieged. Netizens have loudly revealed every nook and hideaway in the city to satiate the lurid interests of national social media audiences. Police have surged into subways and college campuses to appease the business classes and their paranoid delusions of a city lost to thieves and rebels. Rampant gentrification appears to have reached its apex, as the city’s creatives and working-masses retreat to the cursed hills of New Jersey for affordable living. Meanwhile, the entire Acela corridor holds their breath for the impending implosion of the city government, just weeks away from full collapse under the weight of the Adams Administration’s audacious corruption.
Notice to Quit hardly positions itself as commentary on any of this, but in its choice of characters and subject matter the film contrasts excellently with the current doomed vision of New York that preoccupies the modern zeitgeist. Taking place over the course of one long New York day, Notice to Quit is a funny and unpretentious love letter to New York grit, family style. It’s a fast-paced movie that, in its best moments, blurs into heist homage.
Notice to Quit follows a refreshingly simple premise. Our hapless lead Andy Singer (Michael Zegen of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel acclaim) is a down-on-his-luck, dream-squashed realtor facing impending eviction. Irritated, divorced, and strapped for cash and morals, Andy has turned to petty thievery to make ends meet: fencing appliances out of the broken-down rentals he is supposed to be hawking to yuppies and transplants. His spiral into failure appears unending — until his estranged daughter Anna (played excellent here by a witty Kasey Bella Suarez) intrudes to reconnect with her father before she egresses with her mother to greener pastures (Orlando, Florida). Anna successfully rejects her father’s protestations, and so the duo set off in pursuit of one good score to keep Andy off the streets.
In the course of their quest, our duo embark on a series of schemes that explore facets of mundane New York that are often overlooked in upper-crusty-centric depictions of the city. Andy devises intricate plots to trick yuppies into buying run-down bachelor pads. Anna plots to steal valuable listings from Andy’s cutthroat competitors. All the while, they must evade a pack of ruthless thugs pursuing Andy for his access to the most valuable of urban appliances (air conditioners).
The New York shown here is bright, colorful, and energetic. Centering the film on a down-on-his-luck realtor and an optimistic young girl prevents the film from falling into obnoxious New York twee, grounding the city presented here in the perspective of the working class. Socio-political subthemes are present but not the priority; Notice to Quit is more preoccupied in observing the delicate balance between survival and morality that average people must balance to exist in stratified, high-pressure New York City. This tension is best explored in contrasting Andy’s cynical world-weariness with Anna’s tempered optimism. For the film’s fast, packed pace, it is the quiet moments that settles this theme and tension. In one scene, Andy washes away sweat, dirt and desperation from his face in a public restroom and stares at himself in a broken mirror, struggling to process his predicament and circumstance and holding back collapse into total apathy. Meanwhile, Anna glares out the window of a diner, unable to look away from a happy couple laughing with their bouncing, happy child; in this, she sees a life of stability and love that she so desperately wants and knows she can’t have. There are a few moments like this scattered throughout the film; they are brief, quiet and elegantly executed. A greedier film would have lounged in these moments and mined its leads for pathos. However, Simon Hacker’s excellent script is loyal to his characters’ fortitude and prevents the film from losing tonal cohesion or tripping up its sense of pace.
The camera marches around New York with ease and confidence, capturing what feels like authentic New York hustle and bustle. It’s a clear demonstration of director and writer Simon Hacker’s comfort navigating the city’s streets — a skill developed in producing HBOs recent raw-and-raucous documentary series How to with John Wilson. (Fans of that work will find a lot to love here.) The soundtrack by Giosuè Greco also deserves mention. It is subdued by plucky, swelling along as Andy and Anna are bolting through the city, and soothing us down when our leads are waiting patiently on public transit. Despite being a low-budget film (and production company Whiskey Creek’s first), there are no loose threads here: Notice to Quit is an exciting, funny and demure send-up to urban grit.
Notice to Quit is releasing in select theaters on September 27.
