Match Point: Grade A

A

Match Point

Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer. Directed by Woody Allen.

Allen has drawn an amazing performance out of Johansson. One can only guess how hard he worked her but she shows a range that is shocking. Not just another pretty face after all. The other actors give standout performances as well. Woody Allen’s directing is the star of this picture. It’s one of his best. It’s not New York City, not Jewish, not neurotically jokey, not Bergmann, not Hitchcock, and he does not even appear in the picture (as he does in so many of his others). Yet the film is definitely Woody Allenesque, with his usual depiction of the fragile, obsessed and oblivious, claustrophobic lives of the filthy rich. The story is of a marital infidelity, with Scarlett as the starving artist “other woman” against the boring but rich wife Emily Mortimer. Rhys-Meyers plays the indecisive husband extremely well, but his character, unlike Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, is unreflective, making him cartoony, but that trait is necessary for the improbable ending. The triangle story is an old one, so there are many echos, to Dostoyevsky (whose book, Crime and Punishment, appears in the movie in case you didn’t get the analogy), Fatal Instinct, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and even Allen’s own 1989 film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. There is also the characteristic Allenesque touch of magical realism, which stops short of his tradition of having the film make metacomments on film. The meticulous sets make subtle but hilarious ironic comments of their own. The philosophical theme, that much of life is due to chance, seems an afterthought, and is actually contradicted by the story line itself. But despite a shallow and slick veneer, this is a satisfying film of memorable performances.