The low-budget achievement combines three short stories united by a common thread, a format that we don’t see that often in American films. The story evolved from a basic idea eventually conditioned by the writer’s feelings about 9/11 and its aftermath. In the first story, Aiello, an increasingly effective character actor with a great face for close-ups, plays a shoe repair man who is an old-world style craftsman. As he is about to close his shop in Manhattan, a woman played by Judith Light enters and asks him to repair her broken sole. He adamantly refuses to remain open for her, is cajoled and finally relents reluctantly. In the course of their sparring we learn that a woman named Louise has left a pair of shoes to be fixed. Who is she, and will she return? There is a reason for the shop owner’s edgy demeanor.

The second story involves a conversation between a cab driver, portrayed by Bob Dishy, and his passenger, enacted by Laila Robins. The situation is an extended version of the conversations one sometimes has with a cabbie, and while it may not believable that the lady in question would not have jumped out of the taxi and tried to get another one considering some exasperating circumstances, the conversation is so well written and the acting so effective that attention is held.

Dishy can be extremely funny in his manner and delivery, but he is also able to evoke sadness underneath the chit chat, as when he talks about the problem of his mother’s diabetes, and the need to inject her with insulin. There is more to the situation, and it is left to viewers to figure out the connection to the central theme.

There is humor in the third segment, “The Dyslexic Lover,” with John Shea giving a likable performance as a dyslexic man who hits on an unusual way to seek a mate. Trying computer dating, he looks for a partner whose name is spelled the same way forwards and backwards. Nan, portrayed with much appeal by the excellent actress Margaret Colin, seems the perfect solution, and they wind up spending a magical night together. But when she learns the next morning why he selected her, she becomes resentful. Ultimately, we learn of Nan’s upset concerning a friend named Louise, which leads us back again to the shoe repair shop we saw in the first segment.

During the course of the film there is considerable conversation about films, with the emphasis on foreign movies, and this provides an intellectual underpinning to the characters, as well as gives the film a certain worldly ambience of the sort one might encounter in a foreign language film even though the story location is New York.