Crossing Delancey

 Crossing Delancey is a 1988 romantic comedy film starring Amy Irving (nominated for a Golden Globe), Peter Riegert, Reizl Bozyk, David Hyde-Pierce and Sylvia Miles.  The title uses Delancey Street in lower Manhattan as a symbol of a crossroads, both literally and figuratively, representing the protagonist's journey as she navigates between the Jewish world she was born into and the literary world she aspires to.

Crossing Delancey is a cinematic treat worth viewing, an enjoyable, crowd-pleasing romance involving Jewish characters. It contains a New York love triangle in which the heroine faces a choice between two very different men.  

Isabelle (Irving) works for a New York bookstore where she mingles with the city's literary elite, whom she idolizes. But outside of work she is lonely and unfulfilled. When Dutch-American author Anton (Hyde-Pierce) comes to the bookstore to give a reading, he shows an interest in Isabelle, who is charmed.

Isabelle pays frequent visits to her Yiddish-speaking Bubbe (grandmother), Ida (Bozyk - a Yiddish theater stage actress in her only movie role), who lives in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Anxious for her granddaughter to settle down with a decent Jewish man, Ida hires a marriage broker (Miles). 

Although enraged, Isabelle grudgingly allows the matchmaker to introduce her in Bubbe’s kitchen to Sam (Riegert).  At first Isabelle is dismissive of Sam, believing that the small business he owns, a street corner pickle stand, is too working class to provide the life she  wants. 

Instead, Isabelle sets her sights on Anton and the New York City intelligentsia.  She learns that Sam kept turning down the matchmaker because he was waiting for her to bring a photo of Isabelle.

Sam has quietly had a crush on Isabelle from afar for many years. "How do I talk to Isabelle?"  She is deeply touched.

One day at a store book reading, Sam shows up invited by Isabelle, as does Anton. Isabelle leaves with Sam, and later agrees to meet him the next day at her Bubbe’s apartment to go on a date.

After work the next day, however, she is sidelined by Anton and, believing that he is romantically interested in her, goes to his apartment. She discovers instead that the narcissistic Anton wants an assistant he can sleep with, not a real wife or girlfriend.

A disgusted Isabelle rejects him and races to her grandmother's apartment.  Will Sam still be there?  Will he give up waiting for her?  Or not?