Entertainment

‘Gut Renovation’ review

Many New Yorkers, including this one, believe that relentless condo-ification robs a neighborhood of its soul.

So Su Friedrich’s documentary represents an odd achievement. By the time the director puts her camera on about the 20th person she’s filming merely because the woman is smartly dressed and carrying some midrange shopping bags, I was thoroughly on the yuppies’ side.

“Gut Renovation” is ostensibly a personal essay about the ruination of Williamsburg as an industrial and working-class neighborhood, but it’s swiftly apparent that it’s really about one thing, and one thing only.

Friedrich, a resident of two decades, was priced out, and she’s mad about it. She spent five years shooting video of the changes that took place after the March 2005 rezoning of her area from industrial to residential, and has gathered it together with narration and intertitles.

The result is like an hour and a half listening to someone bellyache about her landlord.

Even Friedrich’s girlfriend tells her the film should be titled “I Hate Rich People.” That would be funnier if it didn’t come packaged with so much footage of things Friedrich resents. Those things include, but most certainly are not limited to, people in suits, people in shiny cars, shiny kitchens, fancy dogs, fancy strollers, nannies and Bloomingdale’s.

“Gut Renovation” achieves value when Friedrich turns off her complaint-o-meter in order to talk to the longtime Williamsburg workers who are being displaced. Their remarks are humorous, sweet and mournful — all the things the rest of the movie is not.