Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's movie is the romantic drama, "Autumn in New York," a production of Lakeshore Entertainment released in 2000.

It was directed by Joan Chen from a screenplay by Allison Burnett.

"Autumn in New York" stars Richard Gere and Winona Ryder with support from Anthony LaPaglia, Elaine Stritch, Vera Farmiga, Sherry Stringfield, Jill Hennessy, and J.K. Simmons.

Will Keane in his late 40s is a man on top of his world.

He's a handsome, charismatic restaurateur that women and some men seem to find irresistible.

And his romantic exploits, as much as his culinary expertise, have landed him on the cover of "New York Magazine."

At his restaurant in one busy evening, he runs his eyes over the many attractive young women eager to know him better, but he's particularly smitten by a girl who is celebrating her 22nd birthday with a group of her friends.

Will runs into Dolly, an older woman Will has known since he was friends with her daughter, Katie, many years before.

Later, Katie married and she and her husband died in an automobile accident shortly after their only child, a daughter was born.

Dolly introduces Will to her granddaughter, Katie's daughter, Charlotte, the young woman Will has been trading glances with since he entered the restaurant.

Will admires the hat Charlotte has made for her friends for the celebration, and he later calls her to ask her to make a hat for the woman he'll be taking as a date to a formal benefit.

When Charlotte delivers the hat to Will's apartment, he tells her his date has canceled and he asks Charlotte to go to the benefit with him in her place.

Charlotte happily agrees, wearing a gown Will provides for her.

After the benefit, they spend the night together at his apartment.

In the morning, will says he must be honest with her and admit that the relationship has no future.

Charlotte, in turn, is honest with him.

She knows that relationship has no future because she's suffering from a fatal heart condition and only has a short time to live.

[gentle upbeat music] "Autumn in New York" was directed by Joan Chen, a Chinese-American actress and director who has worked steadily in both China and the United States.

She was born in Shanghai in 1961 and grew up during China's cultural revolution under Mao Tse-Tung.

At school, her skill as a markswoman brought her to the attention of Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and led to her enrollment in the actor's training program at the Shanghai Film Studio in 1975.

Her success while still a teenager in films glorifying the People's Republic led to her being dubbed "the Elizabeth Taylor of China" by Time Magazine.

Chen majored in English at Shanghai International Studies University and first came to the United States at 20, in part to study filmmaking at California State University at Northridge in the San Fernando Valley.

She was cast as the female lead, May May, in the Hollywood historical adventure drama, "Tai-Pan," filmed in China and released in 1986.

She appeared as Wan Juan in Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" in 1987, and had a recurring role as Josie Packard in David Lynch's television series, "Twin Peaks" from 1989 to 1991.

Chen found herself cast in a variety of American movies and television programs, good and bad, most often playing an exotic beauty.

She told Time Magazine in 1999, "I did my best to give a version of Chineseness that the West was looking for.

I understood that they would only accept certain versions of me, which I played up to, but I also understood that that version of me was worthless."

[gentle upbeat music continues] In 1998, Chen directed her first film, "Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl," a Chinese production about a young woman whose life is ruined when she is sent to the countryside by the communist government and then not allowed to return to her home as promised.

Writing in "The New York Observer," critic Andrew Sarris called the movie, "The most implacable indictment of Mao's great cultural revolution as it is possible to imagine."

"Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl" drew high critical praise and won several film awards including Taiwan's Golden Horse Award for Best Director.

"Autumn in New York" was Chen's second directorial outing, and the first film produced by a major American studio to be directed by an Asian-American woman.

Tragic romances are a longtime staple of world literature from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe and Ovid's "Metamorphoses" to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to Emily Bronte's Cathy and Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights" to Tony and Maria in the musical "West Side Story."

But the romance whose tragedy derives from the impending death of one of the partners in a male-female relationship, almost invariably the woman, provides a distinct sub-genre.

The primary example in the modern West is the novel "La Dame aux Camelias" by Alexandre Dumas fils, first published in 1848.

Known in English as "Camille," it tells the story of a French courtesan Marguerite Gautier, who finds true love with an earnest young man Armand Duval, only to die of consumption, of disease usually identified as tuberculosis.

A similar fate befell Mimi, lover of Rodolfo, in Giacomo Puccini's 1896 opera "La Boheme."

In motion pictures, the romance cut short by the woman's tragic fatal illness was popularized by a number of adaptations of Dumas novel as "Camille" was portrayed in silent movies by such actresses as Sarah Bernhardt in 1911, Theda Berra in 1917, Alla Nazimova opposite Rudolph Valentino in 1921, and Norma Talmadge in 1926.

The classic sound adaptation starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, and Lionel Barrymore was directed by George Cukor for MGM in 1936.

Warner Brothers provided a somewhat different version of the story of a heedless woman who finds redemptive love shortly before her untimely death with 1939's "Dark Victory," directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Bette Davis and George Brent, with Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan in supporting roles.

But for many of us, the most iconic version of a romance rendered tragic by the woman's fatal illness is Erich Segal's 1970 short novel "Love Story."

Segal, a classics professor at Yale University, originally wrote the story as a screenplay and only later adapted it into a novel as a way of promoting the forthcoming movie.

The book became a "New York Times" number 1 bestseller, the best-selling work of fiction for 1970 and was ultimately translated into 33 languages.

The motion picture starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal was the top box office attraction of 1970, and humorous variations of its catchphrase, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," became a part of many a comedians act and is now an established part of popular culture.

Many critics noted the resemblance between "Autumn in New York" and other movies about romances cut short by a tragic illness, albeit with a notable difference.

Emanuel Levy wrote in a review in "Variety": Desperately eager to register as a love affair in the mold of Hollywood's classics, Joan Chen's romantic meller is a kind of modern-day "Love Story," with a "new" twist: The casting of Richard Gere as a suave lover old enough to be Winona Ryder's father.

The age of Richard Gear's Will Keane is variously given as 48 or 49, while Winona Ryder's Charlotte Fielding is only 22, although Ryder herself was 29 when the film was made.

The critics were generally not kind in their reviews of "Autumn in New York," many of them citing the familiar nature of the story, the differences in the lover's ages, and a lack of chemistry between Gere and Ryder.

Peter Rainer wrote in "New York" magazine: One gets the feeling that the filmmakers weren't entirely happy with the political incorrectness of this pairing, which is why Charlotte, who is literally heartsick, exists in a state of continual near-expiration while Will is made to lament her impending loss.

The message here is, if you guys are going to romance women half your age, be prepared to suffer for it.

Despite their lack of enthusiasm for the film, critics praised Gu Changwei's cinematography and generally expressed support for Joan Chen's work as a director.

Chen had her own problems with the film.

MGM United Artists recut "Autumn in New York" and decided to release it to the general public without the usual previews for critics, often taken as a sign that a studio doesn't have much faith in a movie's prospects.

Chen told "Entertainment Weekly" that her cut of the film had scored highest with test audiences but the studio made changes anyway.

Notably, cutting a nude scene with Winona Ryder that would've been her first.

"I think directors should have final cut," said Chen.

"When directors don't have final cut, it's very hard to be responsible for anything, and to actually create good work."

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.