Magical Woody Allen

Rating: 9/10 (25 April 2006)

"Match Point" moves fast. Everything happens so quickly that you miss it if you turn your head around. Even so, the movie's length is over two hours, and when you think an hour has gone by, only thirty minutes have passed. My grandmother said: "They say it's not like Woody Allen's films but it has the eye of the genius". She was right; Allen has created the most common plot line with the least common results.
Basing it slightly in something about a question of luck, the master places his game in Britain, particularly in London, precisely in the high class of the city. An Irish tennis instructor, former professional, called Chris Wilton (the growing talent Jonathan Rhys Meyers) requests to give classes in a tennis club. Soon he buys an apartment and meets Tom Hewett (a surprising Matthew Goode), and goes to an opera with his parents because they share the same passion.
This is when you wonder if Chris could have studied Tom and known what he liked, if he just sensed it or if he just had luck. Chris says at the beginning of the film: "There's a time in a tennis match where the ball hits the top of the net and remains in mid air for a second. With a little luck, the ball goes over and you win; or it doesn't, and you loose". That statement is presented later in the movie with many situations but specifically with one crucial moment.
Soon, again, Chris meets and starts dating Tom sister's Chloe (Emily Mortimer) and going to his parents' (flawless but limited Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton) country house, generating a good relationship with them. We get to know the main character (all of the characters) and we predict his ambitions and the place he wants to arrive. However, he is surrounded by people who play the game, know the rules and are aware of the consequences.
But there's always a weakness; in this case, it is Chris' very believable affection for Chloe. When Chloe's parents realize that they're both becoming close, they want to help him, even if he (very intelligently) didn't ask for it. Then Nola Rice, (each time better, Scarlett Johansson) Tom's fiancée appears, and meets while playing ping-pong when he tires to help her in a provocative way. "Didn't they tell you that your game is aggressive?", she asks him. "Didn't they tell you that you have sexy lips?", he responds.
Now Chris has done a lot to get where he is and knows that the only of screwing it up is by "making a pass" at her"; or so she tells him. The vocabulary and way of speaking used in every scene is admirable. In the line of what Patrick Marber did in "Closer" recently, but in a better way, Allen makes the character's seduction believable with his words. We believe it here, because we are allowed to be in their minds.
Then we sit and watch, patiently, and when we think we know the characters, actions take place and we can't believe what we were thinking. That's why Woody Allen's screenplay highlights more than his direction; that's why the screenplay is the high point: it astonishes. His direction, on the other hand shows the always great acting control and a camera that makes a long movement observing each scene it shoots.
The music is simply constituted by long or short or whole parts of famous Operas, which is as tragic as the tone of the story, editor Alisa Lepselter draws a lot of attention because of the rough cuts that definitely prove that Allen is not doing one of his last nice comedies. The central character does lots of things to cause an effect on people and to win them; but Chris Wilton is no Tom Ripley.
Ripley was a true genius, uninterested in what his decisions would cause to anyone; Wilton lies down with a manual about reading Dostoievski so he can impress an old man. Ripley didn't feel; Wilton is vulnerable, and doesn't own a mastermind: so he depends on luck. It could be enough, or not.