Over the past decade, Woody Allen’s filmmaking has been uneven at best, especially his last effort, Melinda and Melinda, a failed experiment trying to meld comedy and tragedy into one ultra-pretentious ball of nothing. The biggest problem with Melinda was that it neither funny nor incredibly tragic.
In his latest film, Match Point, Allen eschews most of the comfortable familiarities that he has been clinging to all of these years, resulting in the most assured work of the director’s latter career. The biggest shift in style concerns the setting of the film, which takes place not in Allen’s ubiquitous Manhattan, but in London.
However not everything has changed. At times, Allen’s London still seems a lot like Manhattan, with the pedestrian packed streets and tree-lined sidewalks. Perhaps this was the director’s intention-to show that the two cities, despite hosting a different culture and being located in a different country-are similar in essence.
The film begins as Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) moves to London from a middle-class neighborhood in Ireland. Back home, Chris was a tennis champ, hyped up to be the next Agassi, but quit the professional circuit due to decreased confidence in his abilities.
Once in London, Chris immediately meets Tom Hewitt, (Matthew Goode) a young, carefree aristocrat in need of some tennis lessons. Chris soon becomes more than just a tennis instructor to the Hewitt’s, as he meets Tom’s sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer) and begins a serious relationship with the girl. The Hewitt family instantly adores Chris, especially the elder Mr. Hewitt, who sets Chris up with a high paying corporate job.
Meanwhile, Chris finds himself strongly flirting with a mysterious woman named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson) after meeting her in the family’s living room. He soon finds out that Nola is Tom’s fiancée, an inconvenient situation, considering his relationship with both Tom and Chloe.
Shrugging off the imminent danger ahead, Chris continues to lust after Nola until she finally gives in, leading to, at first, a brief affair. However, Nola is eventually dumped by Tom and as a result, Chris marries Chloe. After a few years of being stuck in a boring marriage with Chloe, Chris meets Nola in a random encounter and the two carry on where they left off.
Chris is successfully able to keep oblivious Chloe in the dark about his extramarital affair, but he slips and gets Nola pregnant. This sets the film up for a taut and clever conclusion that leaves your mouth hanging open at the injustice of the action presented before you.
While the plot may sound a bit soap operaish on paper, Allen uses his actors to perfection in creating a film noir-like atmosphere, without the grey tones. If the film was simply a series of twists and backstabs, the overall effect probably wouldn’t satisfy as well as it does. Instead, we have already figured out what will happen in the next scene, but the enjoyment comes from seeing how it plays out. Oddly, the film’s predictability ends up being its prime asset.
Much of the dialogue crackles with bitterness and witty retorts, brought to life by the excellent cast. I haven’t thought much of Rhys Meyers’ work throughout the previous years, but he holds his own in an emotionally demanding role. At the start, he comes off as a modest overachiever who stumbles into a good deal. Over the course of the film, Chris becomes a scheming adulterer who cares little for his wife, who he sees as being childlike. Mortimer, as Chloe, brings an appealing carelessness to her role, apparent in all the members of the Hewitt family. In one dinner scene, after Chris tells a story of his father losing his legs, Chloe and Tom giggle about the irony of the situation rather than be empathetic to his misfortune. They proceed to discuss collecting cars as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Johansson-an actress who has come into her own in the last couple of years-really shines as Nola Rice. When we first meet her, she displays all the elegant heartlessness of a typical Hewitt aristocrat. As she shares more time with Chris, we learn that she comes from the same middle-class background. She starts as an upscale ice princess and ends as a hopeless loner.
Allen sticks with conceptual filmmaking here, having the action between Chris and Nola play out like a tennis match. But while his latest efforts have been overreaching, he finds a comfortable balance with the tennis metaphor within Match Point. I, for one, hope he never returns to Manhattan.
"Match Point" opens December 28, 2005 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Woody Allen. Written by Woody Allen . Starring Brian Cox, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson.
