WOODY ALLEN: MATCH POINT

[Chris Knipp]

The new Woody Allen movie set in England and focused on social climbing, infidelity, and tennis opens December 28th and has received Golden Globe nominations as well as rave reviews in Europe. Reportedly the Manhattan auteur's "most vital film in a decade" (TimeOutNY), this is one that most likely has to be taken into account when we're making our 2005 Best Lists.

[oscar jubis]

There's a ton of movies I'd have to watch before making lists. Some won't open here until Jan. or early Feb.
The White Countess with Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson.
Mrs. Henderson Presents (Stephen Frears)
The Producers
Munich
The New World (Terrence Malick)
Transamerica (Felicity Huffman may just beat Witherspoon for an Oscar)
Several foreigns like Hidden and Live-in Maid.
There are more I'm sure.

[Chris Knipp]

You can start threads for those others if you want to but this thread is for Match Point, not list-making.

[cinemabon]

Many critics are comparing it to "Crimes and Misdemeanors," and to other classics, such as "Room at the Top" and "A Place in the Sun." Based on and inspired by a story by Dostoevsky, Allen does not appear in the film based in London. He is quoted as saying the film involves the quirey as to how much "luck" plays in our lives; stating: "People are afraid to admit how contingent their lives are on chance and luck." (taken from the link on "Production notes")

For other comments, observations, production notes, trailers, and professional newspaper reviews, check out Rottentomatoes.com : http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/match_point/

[arsaib4]

Allen has already finished another film in London with Scarlett Johansson; it's called Scoop. I still need to catch Melinda and Melinda which came out earlier this year. Match Point premiered out-of-competition at Cannes, much to the chagrin of many who thought that it was strong enough to win a prize. Looking forward to it!

[wpqx]

Well I guess I the self proclaimed Woody Allen authority should fittingly be the first to see this, and in all honesty this is the first time I have caught a Woody Allen film on the big screen. The comparissons to Crimes and Misdemeanors is relavent and there is certainly evidence to support it here. Allen was often quoted as saying that he wished his comic subplot was removed from Crimes and Misdemeanors and the film just focused on Saul Bellow's moral delemna. Well roughly 15 years later he gets his chance, takes his story out of the country, and makes the morally ambiguous film he wanted years ago.

The cast is in amazing form, and I think it is a blessing that Allen for once in the last two decades avoided major movie stars. Sure Scarlett Johansen is earning A-list credentials these days, but she is somewhat supporting, and after The Island she may have dipped a bit on the popularity charts. Her performance however good is still typical of the Allen heroine, alluring at first, but ultimately obsessive. Allen is a mysoginist, let's face it, and it shows in his movies countless times.

Chloe (Emily Mortimer) is by far the most typical Allen character. She is agressor in the relationship with Chris. She is all about offering her help, and it is her that makes the suggestion of where should they first have sex. Likewise she is the loving unsuspecting wife who wants the baby, coaxes him into marriage, and is generally needy. Allen males generally don't have to work too hard, and if they do it is only because obsessive women like Chloe and Nola (Johannsen) make it so. Nola takes the role once given to Angelica Huston in Crimes and Misdeanors and although it's nothing new, she has a much more alluring quality with her youth that was lacking in the earlier film.

Allen's existentialism comes roaring back here. Once again he gets to believing that there is no point in the world, and I for one am glad this side of Allen has returned. He's avoided anything serious or philosophical in his last several films, so it is a welcome rememberence of Allen the more serious filmmaker, and incarnation I honestly preferred to the comedian. Although this isn't Allen taking himself too seriously as he did in September, but he still isn't funny here. In fact I don't recall a laugh here, but there still isn't an overwhelming tension built up. There is a slight relief laugh near the end, but to discuss it would give away far too much of the plot.

When murder gets involved Allen instantly becomes obsessed with human guilt. The debate arises as to whether or not you can sensibly get away with it, not in terms of the police, but morally. This was the main theme of Crimes and Misdemeanors where Saul nearly cracked but wound up eventually living with the guilt is something that has plagued Allen since. This belief that man could get away with murder and would only get caught if he wanted to. First rate Allen, and if this is a return to form, I welcome it.

Grade A -

[Chris Knipp]

Very helpful and specific, but so much so that i can't read it all till I write my own review.

[Chris Knipp]

WOODY ALLEN: MATCH POINT

Game, set, match: Woody scores a big one

Review by Chris Knipp

Match Point is elegant and peculiar. There are some classic conventions that are followed, but followed in Woody Allen's own ways. It has three main elements: social climbing, adultery, and crime, all in a posh English setting that plays two arrivistes -- an American girl, a would-be actress, Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson) and an Irish boy, fading (but still young) tennis star Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) -- against a rich London family, the Hewitts. When everything falls into the boy's lap -- wealth, position, a doting wife-- and against the odds he is immediately adored by the family patriarch, Alec Hewett (Brian Cox), Chris is nonetheless compelled from first opportunity to pursue the American girl. To begin with she is taboo because she's his brother-in-law-to-be Tom Hewett's fiancée; then she is taboo because Tom has let her go and she is effectively banished from the family, which has accepted Chris as the partner for Tom's sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Chris's relationship with Nola stands to ruin everything, yet he can't resist it.

Allen follows conventions that are expedient rather than realistic. It all happens so quickly: Chris is hired as tennis pro at a fashionable club. After a lesson from him, the tall, patrician Tom Hewitt invites Chris to the family box at the opera. He is immediately admired by Chloe, and they begin going out together. Alec likes Chris, and approves him for Chloe, so he's given a good post at one of Alec's firms. He's soon offered a chance at, and gets, a very high position at the firm with perks, car, and driver. He and Chloe take an enormous flat overlooking the Thames paid for by Alec.

When this rapid rise is barely beginning Chris meets Nola because she's with Tom. Johannson and Rhys-Meyers are given screen-devouring closeups as in a private moment Chris comes on strong to Nola. Her warnings and demurrals only whet his appetite. As the story is smoothly and rapidly filled in, nothing really matters for the movie's progress so long as Chloe is doting, Alec nurturing, Tom debonair, and the family spreads splendid. The important thing is that Rhys-Meyers and Johannson be strong and intense, that their personalities seem vivid and their chemistry convincing. It works. The two actors have the same mocking intensity; they even have the same lips. They're attractive misfits, perfectly cast. You can believe they'd be drawn tightly together. These two people aren't dolls in a Woody Allen movie. They're alive.

Rhys-Meyers, who has played wicked or androgynous roles (but also the decent coach in Bend It Like Beckham and George Osborne in Vanity Fair), gets to be here something more like what perhaps he originally was in life: an ambitious young man of talent from a poor Irish family. Johansson, who has a bold, ironic presence, is fine in the early scenes when she is simply saying no in a way that can only inflame an eager young man, and then acquiescing with growing passion in the forbidden affair. The scenes between the two may not be the world's hottest but they sparkle. It's only later when Johansson has to be more and more needy and doting that she turns shrill and ordinary. But by that time the plot has wound so tight it may not matter.

Chris marries Chloe. Tom also marries someone more approved by his mother (same cleric, church, and shot). Chloe wants children from Chris as soon as possible, but she can't get pregnant. This effort becomes increasingly tedious and mechanical for Chris as his sexual affair heats up with Nola, newly returned to London from a spell in America after the break with Tom and many failed auditions. Though she's brazen and sassy with Chris, she wilts when she tries out for a part. It's a classic film convention that every setting is beyond nice, and so somehow Nola on return has found a terrific flat though in a rather dicey neighborhood. This is as far as we can go except to say that the final sequences include not only references to Greek tragedy but Hitchcockian cross-cutting to create suspense, and a police procedural segment that moves rapidly. Yes, there have been repeated references to the role of chance in life and somebody does read Crime and Punishment. The ending makes Chris not a little like Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, but also has links with Dreiser. Come to think of it, the whole setup suggests Henry James. The look of the scenes is bright and beautiful. The use of Caruso arias as background music works remarkably well, and idiosyncratically, to suggest illicit ("operatic") passion, and toward the end, to provide a sense of near-hysterical tension.

Match Point isn't without flaws. Ms. Johannson's unfortunate shrillness toward the end has been mentioned. Besides that, the early section is flatly expository. We can see the wheels turning even if they're well oiled. The middle section, whose adultery becomes a bit too sweaty for this glamorous exercise in nihilism, is more tiring than farcical. The last part is thrilling, but almost seems spliced on from another more suspenseful movie. Nonetheless because of lively acting and swift pacing it all works, and works surprisingly well. Though it may be taken as serious -- Match Point is hardly a comedy -- this new Woody Allen movie, despite plot similarities to some earlier Allen oeuvres, notably Crimes and Misdemeanors, indeed is a bright new departure after a long spell of tedium from the Manhattan auteur. It may be thought-provoking, but before anything else it's engaging, exciting, and fun -- and one of the year's best American films.

[mouton]

MATCH POINT
Written and Directed by Woody Allen


The ladies who saved my seat at the nearly sold-out screening of MATCH POINT I attended, were having the same conversation probably everyone in the audience has had at one point in time before buying their ticket for the evening’s final showing.

“I know,” the lady furthest to my right exclaimed. “My boyfriend and I were watching the preview and then it was, like, ‘This is a Woody Allen film.’ It didn’t look anything like that.”

“I know,” the closer lady returned. “It looks really good.”

This leads me to two major points of contention when it comes to addressing MATCH POINT. First, the previews look like a drastic departure from Woody’s previous outings. It looks smooth, glossy, and conventional even. The other point refers to the widely established opinion of the movie going public that it has been ages since Woody made a good movie. From two points, stem two questions. Is it really that different? And is it really any good?

Woody Allen has been making movies for just over forty years so it seems reasonable to wonder just how much of a departure MATCH POINT really could be from a director who’s neurotic mistrust of love and life looms over most of his offerings. Even as he gets on in years and no longer takes on the lead acting responsibilities, cutting down to merely writing and directing one film a year on average, the ghost of the Woody Allen caricature finds it’s way into the picture (see Jason Biggs in ANYTHING ELSE or Will Ferrell in MELINDA AND MELINDA.) The lead here, tennis pro turned instructor, Chris Wilton is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. We meet him after Woody’s classic plain white text on black background opening credits, interviewing for a job and looking for a London flat. The young lad worked his way out of a poor Irish background into the pro-tennis circuit before retiring for a more stable life where he could appreciate the finer things life had to offer, like opera and art. In opposition to past leads, he is well put together, focused. He has his eye on the ball, if you will. This is not to say he has everything figured out or is without fear. He knows he wants to do something of value with his life, isn’t clear on what exactly that is but also does not let hesitation paralyze him. Upon meeting Chloe Hewett (the glowing Emily Mortimer), Chris’ biggest similarity to the Woody Allen archetype becomes apparent. Despite all his efforts and subsequent accomplishments, he is a pessimist. He may appreciate the finer things but his belief is the finest things are those capable of capturing and communicating everything that is tragic about life. Can a pessimist truly know love? Woody seems to think yes, at least at first. Chloe is an eternal optimist who has never known anything tragic about life and despite their differences they fall in love while walking around London, which Allen frames like postcards in much the same way he has framed Manhattan for years.

Woody has a strong handle on the visual direction, allowing characters to walk in and out of the frame when we would expect them to. There are no surprises, just a natural direction, suggesting that Woody knows exactly what we will want to see as we watch from behind bushes or fences. More importantly, he has an even stronger control on this, his finest screenplay since 1992’s HUSBANDS AND WIVES. MATCHPOINT is ultimately about luck, how little importance we place on luck despite the significant role it plays in our lives and how far we’re willing to push our own luck. Chris, a devout believer in the influence luck has on his life, decides to close his eyes and hope for the best when he embarks on an affair with Nola Rice (Scarlet Johansson), his soon-to-be brother-in-law’s fiancé. The two gravitate towards each other, pulled by an uncontrollable sexual desire. Separately, they each represent opposite ends of the luck spectrum. Chris is still riding his lucky streak, scoring his tennis instructor job, meeting Chloe, getting a job at one of her father’s business firms. Whereas Nola is still trying to escape hers, running away from her dead-end Colorado home, struggling to make it as an actress and eventually losing her fiancé, Tom (Matthew Goode). The question then is how much better is Chris’ luck when all the successes he stumbles upon are not what he wants but what he believes he should want?

Further strengthening Woody’s script, is the issue of class woven in and out of the entire film. Both Chris and Nola come from modest backgrounds at best and are dating members of London’s higher society. Tom and Chloe are happy, High-spirited people with all the time in the world to pursue their interests – opera, tennis, opening an art gallery. Chris and Nola have been working their whole lives to get where they are with Nola finding she still has a great deal of work ahead of her while she’s not certain she has it in her to get there. For Tom and Chloe, there is no flipside to the coin and new opportunities arise all the time. They’ve always been lucky and what makes them descent is at least they can each acknowledge their fortunate existence. Nola has yet to truly know luck and lack of enthusiasm in her speech shows how little faith she has in potentially finding it. But it is the taste of a fortunate man’s life that is new to Chris Wilton. He has a driver now and his new flat no longer has a fold out sofa bed but it does have one of the most spectacular views of London available. So when his affair with Nola begins to threaten his newfound cushion of a life, he is forced to make a decision for the first time instead of leaving everything to chance. This decision brings about a tension and discomfort that is so rarely achieved in filmmaking today. Woody manages to blindside his audience without using it as a gimmick or relying on twists to give the film its ultimate meaning.

Be it lucky in life or unlucky in love, Woody serves up a film about the game itself. We may all think that we have control, that we hold the power over our lives or that we are making the decisions that will move us forward. What Woody wants to remind us is that, like a game, we don’t get to make any of these decisions until it’s our turn to serve and we certainly don’t know what our opponents will do next despite how well we think we know their game.

[oscar jubis]

Matchpoint is certainly worth watching, but I was underwhelmed. It's a well-made movie, but it's rather simple and limited in scope: will Chris be lucky enough to get away with murder? Matchpoint looks particularly lightweight when compared with Separate Lies, another British upper-class sex-and-crime triangle. The latter provides a great deal more psychological nuance and moral complexity.

[Howard Schumann]

MATCH POINT

Directed by Woody Allen (2005)

Match Point has been hailed as an example of a Woody Allen comeback. If this is the best he can do to remind people of his past glory, it's time to re-release Annie Hall. Aside from the standard Allen cynical and negative worldview, this film has uninteresting, cardboard characters who exhibit a complete and utter lack of self-awareness. Allen is apparently so enamored of the British upper class that he endows them with a glamour and cultured elegance that borders on fantasy, and his depiction of women ranges from hysterical to clinging to morally insensitive. Allen's own philosophy is well expressed at the outset by the main character Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a former Tennis pro who reads Dostoevsky but whose outlook on life is south of Samuel Beckett.

“The man who said ‘I’d rather be lucky than good’ saw deeply into life", he philosophizes. "People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win...or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.” So much for skill, experience, and the power of intention in life. Set in a London that is barely recognizable to most ordinary people, Wilton is hired as a tennis instructor and his first pupil is a member of the wealthy Hewitt family, Tom (Matthew Goode). Affable but rather vacuous, Tom is engaged to be married to the sultry Nola (whatever Nola wants, Nola gets) played by Scarlet Johanssen.

Chris can't take his eyes off Nola but falls under the spell of Tom's sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer) who seems to be more obsessed with the idea of love, marriage, and children than with the reality. It is not long before Chloe gets her wish to make momma happy and Chris becomes part of the family, working for dear old dad in the business world. The two seem to share a love of the opera but in a way that is so detached and devoid of emotion they could just as well be addicted to hanging wallpaper.

Bored with the job and guilty about his inability to make Chloe pregnant (another run of bad luck presumably), Chris thoughts turn to the more appealing Nola but when Nola gets pregnant instead of Chloe (darn the luck), some serious decisions have to be made. Try as I might, I found no interest in the characters, their outlook on life, and little concern for how it all turned out. To say I found the ending as appalling as the beginning doesn't imply that I found anything worthwhile in between. The only plus I can allude to is that Allen does not appear on screen. Chalk it up to luck.

GRADE: C-

[Chris Knipp]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
WOODY ALLEN: MATCH POINT

Game, set, match: Woody scores a big one

Review by Chris Knipp

Match Point is elegant and peculiar. There are some classic conventions that are followed, but followed in Woody Allen's own ways. It has three main elements: social climbing, adultery, and crime, all in a posh English setting that plays two arrivistes -- an American girl, a would-be actress, Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson) and an Irish boy, fading (but still young) tennis star Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) -- against a rich London family, the Hewitts. When everything falls into the boy's lap -- wealth, position, a doting wife-- and against the odds he is immediately adored by the family patriarch, Alec Hewett (Brian Cox), Chris is nonetheless compelled from first opportunity to pursue the American girl. To begin with she is taboo because she's his brother-in-law-to-be Tom Hewett's fiancée; then she is taboo because Tom has let her go and she is effectively banished from the family, which has accepted Chris as the partner for Tom's sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Chris's relationship with Nola stands to ruin everything, yet he can't resist it.

Allen follows conventions that are expedient rather than realistic. It all happens so quickly: Chris is hired as tennis pro at a fashionable club. After a lesson from him, the tall, patrician Tom Hewitt invites Chris to the family box at the opera. He is immediately admired by Chloe, and they begin going out together. Alec likes Chris, and approves him for Chloe, so he's given a good post at one of Alec's firms. He's soon offered a chance at, and gets, a very high position at the firm with perks, car, and driver. He and Chloe take an enormous flat overlooking the Thames paid for by Alec.

When this rapid rise is barely beginning Chris meets Nola because she's with Tom. Johannson and Rhys-Meyers are given screen-devouring closeups as in a private moment Chris comes on strong to Nola. Her warnings and demurrals only whet his appetite. As the story is smoothly and rapidly filled in, nothing really matters for the movie's progress so long as Chloe is doting, Alec nurturing, Tom debonair, and the family spreads splendid. The important thing is that Rhys-Meyers and Johannson be strong and intense, that their personalities seem vivid and their chemistry convincing. It works. The two actors have the same mocking intensity; they even have the same lips. They're attractive misfits, perfectly cast. You can believe they'd be drawn tightly together. These two people aren't dolls in a Woody Allen movie. They're alive.

Rhys-Meyers, who has played wicked or androgynous roles (but also the decent coach in Bend It Like Beckham and George Osborne in Vanity Fair), gets to be here something more like what perhaps he originally was in life: an ambitious young man of talent from a poor Irish family. Johansson, who has a bold, ironic presence, is fine in the early scenes when she is simply saying no in a way that can only inflame an eager young man, and then acquiescing with growing passion in the forbidden affair. The scenes between the two may not be the world's hottest but they sparkle. It's only later when Johansson has to be more and more needy and doting that she turns shrill and ordinary. But by that time the plot has wound so tight it may not matter.

Chris marries Chloe. Tom also marries someone more approved by his mother (same cleric, church, and shot). Chloe wants children from Chris as soon as possible, but she can't get pregnant. This effort becomes increasingly tedious and mechanical for Chris as his sexual affair heats up with Nola, newly returned to London from a spell in America after the break with Tom and many failed auditions. Though she's brazen and sassy with Chris, she wilts when she tries out for a part. It's a classic film convention that every setting is beyond nice, and so somehow Nola on return has found a terrific flat though in a rather dicey neighborhood. This is as far as we can go except to say that the final sequences include not only references to Greek tragedy but Hitchcockian cross-cutting to create suspense, and a police procedural segment that moves rapidly. Yes, there have been repeated references to the role of chance in life and somebody does read Crime and Punishment. The ending makes Chris not a little like Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, but also has links with Dreiser. Come to think of it, the whole setup suggests Henry James. The look of the scenes is bright and beautiful. The use of Caruso arias as background music works remarkably well, and idiosyncratically, to suggest illicit ("operatic") passion, and toward the end, to provide a sense of near-hysterical tension.

Match Point isn't without flaws. Ms. Johannson's unfortunate shrillness toward the end has been mentioned. Besides that, the early section is flatly expository. We can see the wheels turning even if they're well oiled. The middle section, whose adultery becomes a bit too sweaty for this glamorous exercise in nihilism, is more tiring than farcical. The last part is thrilling, but almost seems spliced on from another more suspenseful movie. Nonetheless because of lively acting and swift pacing it all works, and works surprisingly well. Though it may be taken as serious -- Match Point is hardly a comedy -- this new Woody Allen movie, despite plot similarities to some earlier Allen oeuvres, notably Crimes and Misdemeanors, indeed is a bright new departure after a long spell of tedium from the Manhattan auteur. It may be thought-provoking, but before anything else it's engaging, exciting, and fun -- and one of the year's best American films.

[Howard Schumann]

Glad that somebody liked it. Does seem, however, that we are writing about two different films.

[Chris Knipp]

If you were looking for Annie Hall that could be an indication why you were not pleased.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
If you were looking for Annie Hall that could be an indication why you were not pleased. Yup, that might be it.