Mediocre Acting Makes a Good Movie

Rating: 7/10 (16 May 2007)

Match Point is typical Woody Allen method neatly fitted into an atypical Woody Allen film. Instead of New York, we're in London. Instead of humor, we're in a series of serious situations, with tensions building from the outset, when Chris Wilton dates Chloe Hewitt but desires his friend's fiancée, Nola Rice. I was taken back to "Crimes and Misdemeanors" while watching this film, and if you're familiar with Allen's dramas you'll recognize in Match Point a very common thread: the protagonist is indeed a Hellenic muse and gets away with a heinous crime, though not without tragic psychological consequences. In this case, long story short, Wilton is caught between the woman he's married (Chloe) and the one he's impregnated (Nola) and has to choose a life with one of them. He devises a rather hackneyed plan to murder Nola and successfully follows through with it, although his actions are visibly stilted by the emotional strain such action wreaks on his character. He fumbles with the murder weapon. He isn't prepared to full unscheduled quotas of collateral damage. And he disposes of the evidence carelessly. Wilton executes a crime that he certainly should be caught for. But Allen carefully threads this needle by making Wilton guilty before he murders Nola, and then cool and crafty after the fact. The script is also careful to express that Wilton's main motivation is fear - fear of losing the comfortable, upper-crust lifestyle he's ensconced in with Chloe and her family, and fear of being publicly dishonored through evidence of infidelity.
As with most Allen films, Match Point has unscripted, ad-lib moments, and here is where the acting rolls consistently downhill and into puddles. Take, for instance, the initial meeting of Chris Wilton and Nola Rice. He's wandering about the Hewitt's mansion when he happens upon Rice playing - and winning - table tennis. What ensues is five minutes of awkward improvisation, and with other actors it would sink. With Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers it swims, mainly because Johansson is sexy (okay, maybe not classically beautiful) and Meyers is the picture of icy, predatory lust. It's easy to forgive the ridiculously dated mobster-flick marbles that roll out of their mouths because they pretend to be tough, sensual entities with utter confidence, and this confidence (barely) saves the scene. Eventually this kind of pretending fades back to acting, but it goes in and out - in another scene with the same characters, Nola has bombed an audition, and drunkenly asserts that men desire her because they want to see what it would be like to have her. Johansson overplays this moment, Meyers looks like he's talking to himself, and the whole Allen method begins to scrape against the walls. But a minute later we're out of the smoky, uncomfortable bar scene and back out on the open English countryside, and the editing here lets us breath again.
What is most refreshing is this change of scenery. London suits the script and the story. It could work in New York, but with London the emphasis on class and its trappings has a greater resonance. The murder motive is terrifically believable. There aren't any jokes. And there is no happy ending. But when the end credits roll, they're chasing a film that struggled a bit to convey its message, and succeeded all the same.