Ah, look at all the lonely people. Adrift in Manhattan focuses on three very lonely New Yorkers whose lives are destined to intersect. Heather Graham has the role which is meant to tie the plot together. She plays optometrist Rose Phipps, a woman who has suffered a great loss and who now lives alone while trying to piece her life back together. Dominic Chianese plays our second main character, Tommaso, an elderly painter, classical music enthusiast and mailroom worker. As we meet him he is being informed by Rose that he is going blind. And then there is young photo shop worker Simon, played by Victor Rasuk. One day Simon sees Rose sitting on a bench in the park and decides to more or less become a stalker, following her around the city taking her picture. He even follows her all the way home, taking pictures of her through the windows. Creepy? You bet.

As the film progresses we learn more about each of these characters. We learn why it is that Rose is seemingly alone in the world. We learn that Simon is extremely shy and withdrawn, apparently having very little idea of how to relate to people. This may have something to do with his mother with whom he has one of the most uncomfortably, bizarrely affectionate parent/child relationships ever seen. The focus of the story really is Rose and Simon. Which is a shame because Tommaso is far and away the most interesting character in the film. We see his frustrations as he deals with his failing sight, blindness akin to a death sentence for this simple but proud man who so loves to paint. And we see him fall in love with a much younger woman from his office, Isabel, played by Elizabeth Peña. Their relationship tugs at the heartstrings, their interactions always compelling. And Chianese and Peña easily give the best performances in the film. Rather unfortunately it seems the movie is always rushing through Tommaso's scenes so the focus can get back to Rose.

The film meanders about, cutting back and forth between our three main protagonists. But the story never really pays itself off. Tommaso is compelling, Rose somewhat less so, and Simon, barely even communicative, hard to identify with. Eventually Rose does something which makes absolutely no sense, something you would never believe anyone in her position would even conceive of doing, and from there the movie really falls apart. For a film which seemed to have some genuine promise, especially in Tommaso's story, in the end it just kind of limply fizzles out. Chianese did excellent work and created a great character and he and Peña work together wonderfully. But the story which surrounds them ultimately falls flat.

If I were to boil this movie down into one sentence: lonely people trapped within jail cells they either create or accept. Character One: Simon, a severely socially-maladapted 20-year-old living in an apartment with his mentally ill mother who uses him for her emotional gratification. Character Two: Tommaso, an elderly mail clerk who has lived alone his whole life so as not to have to share his time or attention with others, and who learns at the outset that he's going blind. Character Three: Rose Phipps, a young professional who, when we see her, we sense a mute sadness. Character Four: Mark Phipps, her estranged husband, who has only two notes - anger and frustration. And Isabel, a family matriarch in Tommaso's office who lives vicariously through her grandchildren. With the exception of Rose, who is the emotional center of this movie, these really aren't people I'd want to spend much time with.

Rose, an optometrist, gives the diagnosis to Tommaso, and suggests that he tell his family and his friends of his condition so as to help his transition into long-term disability. She later becomes a de-facto therapist for him as he works through his denial and anger over the predicament, and later, as he tentatively pursues a romance with Isabel, in his office. Isabel, for her part, develops an attachment to him but it really seems unmotivated; there's no real chemistry between them and their interaction up until the time he asks her on a date is full of un-charming awkwardness. Nor does he doesn't do much to endear himself to her or her family as the romance, such as it is, progresses. He just seems like a grumpy old man who can only talk about himself. I could understand her motivation if it were mere sympathy, but the script wanted it to be more, and it just wasn't earned.

Simon works in a camera shop and as such has access to long-range lenses; since he doesn't have any social outlets, skills, or interests, he already lives rather voyeuristically, so walking around photographing strangers comes quite naturally to him. But he has a problem: he's attracted to pretty women. OK that might not be a problem in itself, but what he decides to do as a result seems questionable. He stalks them. He follows them to their residences. He sits in the dark across from their building and lurks, and shoots photos through open windows. He follows them when they go with their ex-spouses to public events and sits nearby watching them. These scenes are interspersed with scenes of his home life with his crackpot mother, in which there's an unhealthy lack of intimacy boundaries, and this is all meant to show him as pathetic and helpless, but I wasn't buying it. He seemed simply creepy. And that's what makes the next thing so implausible; when Rose catches him out, she doesn't have a restraining order put in place on him, which anyone in her position in real life would do. Instead, she eventually starts to encourage his behavior.

Rose is afflicted by grief, and I do have to say that Graham hits this note-perfect. She has the stricken aura that anyone who has lost someone near can identify. Her emotional world has been slammed sideways; only her work continues, which she continues, joylessly if competently. Of course, it's telegraphed from the first scenes what her affliction is, which makes the explication later more or less gratuitous. Her estranged husband attempts to maintain contact with her but he's oblivious to all but his own needs, and this makes him oafish and repellent.

Tommaso eventually treasures his isolation more than any intimacy Isabel hoped for and was willing to offer, and he asks her to meet him at the park and then stands her up. We saw this coming, didn't we? He watches from a distance in order to cradle his loneliness. Rose lures her stalker into her brownstone and seduces him. Within the confines of her story, this is believable - she wants to feel anything different that what she's been feeling for the last 8 months - but then, the movie itself takes you out of that believability by reminding us just what damaged goods Simon is, so that even while her motivations make sense, the scene is implausible. Not even the sight of Heather Graham's finely-shaped rear is enough to take this scene seriously. And then, with even greater implausibility, the movie wraps up these dangling threads with succinct neatness: Simon stands up to his abusive mother, leaves her to her own twisted devices, and suddenly walks with confidence, soon bumping into and befriending Tommaso, who's finally accepted the need of the help of others. Rose returns as a surprise to her estranged husband.

I guess the takeaway is: all a young guy needs is to get laid by an older woman. And all she needs to return to her husband is to get laid by someone who's violated her privacy. Eh, what? 4/10 only because the acting is mostly good, especially by Graham and Pena.

**SPOILERS*** Originally called "1/9" or the NYC Seventh Avenue subway line that runs the length of Manhattan Island and ends at the tip of The Battery "Adrift in Manhattan" connects three lonely people who live along its route.

20 year old camera store worker Simon Colon, Victor Rasuk, is obsessed in photographing people on the streets, as well as subways, of New York. One day Simon comes across this lady sitting in the park and becomes infatuated with her multi-colored, or rainbow, scarf.The lady in question Rose Phipps, Heather Graham, becomes very agitated, and even frightened, when Simon mails a number of photos he took of her at her brownstone.

We never quite get what Simon's reasons for mailing his secretly taken photos of Rose were but it almost gets him fired from his job. Instead Rose soon becomes almost as infatuated with Simon as he's with her to the point of inviting him into her home and, to Simon's utter surprise and delight, forces him, a virgin, to make love to her!

Like Simon we soon find out that Rose is not all there, emotionally, in that she's estranged from his husband high school teacher Mark, William Baldwin, and is suffering from a deep depression in the tragic loss of her and Mark's two year-old son Casey, Leim De Villa. Rose's sexual relationship with Simon soon starts to effect her work as an eye doctor in her treating a patient of her's the refined elderly and cultured gentleman Tommaso Pensara, Dominic Chianese.

Tommaso is slowly losing his sight and in him loving to paint that's as well has him receiving a slow and painful death sentence. Tommaso is also in danger of losing his job in the mail room in that he can't see the letters and packages in order to correctly distribute them. It's Tommaso's co-worker Isabel Parades, Elizabeth Pena, who not only takes the time to help him out at his job but cover up all his mistakes. Isabel also falls in love with the some 75 year old bachelor who for the first time in years feel that he's wanted for himself not his talents; in his music and his art.

All three main characters, Rose Simon and Tommaso, in the movie interconnect with each other due to their proximity to the 1/9 subway line. And it's that very reason that makes their lonely and desperate lives, who are aimlessly adrift in Manhattan, that much more worth living!