Woody Allen's movies are so densely populated in protagonists, from level one to level four of importance, that it's merely impossible to remember all the names after a first viewing. After "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" I remembered none, except maybe for Cristal, the scam medium played by Pauline Collins. I think this says a lot about the main symptom that affects the film, people's motives are so unclear and their actions so selfish that viewers are more turned off than enthralled by the story and nothing is offered at the end to contradict any negative bias the beginning inspired. That's a shame.
Forget the beginning, the title alone announced what could have been one of these witty little Allen's comedies when a simple prediction could have been the starting point of a series of misunderstandings and random encounters leading to forced romances and hilarious awkwardness... just because some guy looks like that 'tall, dark, stranger'. I expected this and what I got was a rather bland and disenchanted (as much as disjointed) film from Allen who got so many stories and sub-stories to tell they all lost their focus and made the edifice fall apart before the ending credits. At the end, I didn't know exactly what to think, I didn't dislike the film but I found its statement of love inexistent, but as an Allen fan, I'll try to dig deeper.
I guess the film isn't exactly about love as a feeling but as the end-result of an idealization, love is never a starter but a follow-up that makes you highly anticipate a karmic reward... that in most cases reveals itself to be an illusion. Anthony Hopkins plays Alfie, an old man who's got a late epiphany about his mortality and decides to divorce from his wife Helena, played by Jemma Jones, so he can indulge to his wannabe young man's fantasies, including marrying the most blatant representation of a trophy wife (Lucy Punch) who can "give" him the son he 's always wanted after his first one's death. Desperate, Helena visits Cristal who knows exactly what she needs to hear and keeps on convincing her that everything will be all right.
Oddly enough, the therapy works and Helena is convinced she'll meet the dark and brooding stranger, she also believes in reincarnation and that she might have been Marie-Antoinette or Joan of Arc in a previous life, her obsession with reincarnation is her "illusion" that if that life doesn't go well, there's still an option on the next one. Needless to say that her opinion isn't unanimously shared. But better a comforting illusion than an infuriating truth, so Sally (Naomi Watts) rubs her the right way; after enduring her suicidal phase, she knows her mother needs positive words... and she also needs her mother's money to pay the rent. Sally's married to Roy (Josh Brolin), a writer (a euphemistic Hollywood term for a lazy unemployed bum with self-grandeur dreams). Roy met with success once so he believes in his talent, a comforting illusion (could've been the starter's luck) or an infuriating truth that erodes his couple.
Indeed, Sally's got all the reasons to fantasize about her boss played by Antonio Banderas, he could be the dark stranger but the romance is a false track, and could have been handled much better story-wise. I suspect it's because Allen was more focused on the other affair between Roy and Dia, a young music student played by Freida Pinto whose role is so chronologically close to her breakthrough performance in "Slumdog Millionnaire" that I kept thinking of Latika. I think the film could have worked better had it focused on the old couple, because the chemistry between Watts and Banderas wasn't enough to make the disappointment work and I couldn't buy one second that Dia would fall in love with a slob like Roy who admitted he kept peeking on her window, using his passion for art as 'pickup' lines the same way he got Sally, bragging about his medical talent. Dia falls too easily for Roy, which is indicative of the underwritten Allen's character who's just here because she's played by a pretty, young rising actress.
Pinto isn't given a role like Scarlett Johannsen in "Match Point" or "Scoop" and overall, there's not a single character treated in a way that invites for empathy. Only Hopkins and Jones had well-traced arcs and although her cockney accent was too distracting at times, I thought Lucy Punch turned into a more interesting character revealing a heart behind her 'adventurous' façade, as if she could use Hopkins' wealth as much as he used her to flatter his own ego. The film has a statement about the selfish roots of love as a mutual illusion that only serves to fulfill selfish dreams. It's just as if love could never be gratuitous or disinterested... such a disenchanted movie that deserved perhaps more rewriting because the material was good. But maybe Allen is too prolific for his own good and this is why he comes up with great films every 2-3 years and the in-between ones have the resonance of incomplete fillers.
At the end, the film is a rather depressing collection of subplots that doesn't reinvent the wheel, the 'Hopkins' story is a copy-paste of Sidney Pollack's affair in "Husbands and Wives" and the rest of the interactions are just ersatz of previous Allenian gems ... maybe the blandness of the film is a strong reflection of the evolution of our time as perceived by the director. It's as if, at the dawn of the 2010s, Allen could foreshadow the fading of his popularity at the awakening of old scandals and the way he was backstabbed by actors who worked with him. Popularity is as illusory as love and about those who're shaming Allen now, I'm just wondering whether they're sincere or simply driven by the preservation of their career?
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