Do you feel guilty?

Rating: 9/10 (8 May 2006)

Woody Allen is at the top of a short list for the title of greatest American director of the past 35 years. The man has produced quality films since the hilarity of Bananas in 1971, seemingly with ease. He's given us some duds (see 1980-1984 and 2000-2004), but his credentials are impeccable: Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Interiors, Purple Rose of Cairo, Everyone Says I Love You, Sweet and Lowdown, Hannah and Her Sisters, Deconstructing Harry, Husbands and Wives, etc. And, when his films fall flat, they're nevertheless interesting. Like Robert Altman, he just seems to love making movies, regardless of their critical reception.
As I said, Woody had hit the doldrums of late, producing intermittently funny films like Hollywood Ending and Small Time Crooks. To pompously quote Jeff Daniels in the Squid and the Whale, these are lesser Allen. Match Point is his best film since a string of brilliant gems during the mid- to late 1990s. It's terse, tragic, and darkly humorous; it's also a delicious slice of noir. Allen has made a movie like this (Crimes and Misdemeanors) but this slick little movie feels more lurid and more juicy.
It's a potboiler that moves inexorably toward its conclusion like the finest fatalistic literature. Echoes of Dostoyevski and Strindberg are heard clearly throughout, but there are undercurrents here as well of Dreiser. To those who pick up on these leitmotifs and those who remember Crimes and Misdemeanors, the plot will not surprise, but do not worry. The characters are despicable (every single one) to varying degrees and the actors take to them with relish. Match Point is easily the best-acted Woody Allen film to come along since Sweet and Lowdown; I would argue that acting here trumps that in just about any Allen film not named Manhattan, Interiors, or Crimes and Misdemeanors. As Chris, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a perfect cipher: beautiful, charming, and everything everyone wants him to be (he is, in that way, like a Tom Ripley). He also has a habit of allowing people to push him around, though he is far from spineless. Scarlett Johanson is no less stunning as Nola; sultry at first, the layers peel away to reveal an exceedingly emotional, unstable, and wounded woman. Her cries of liar near the end of the film are gutwrenchingly believable.
Why else should you see Match Point? Well, there's the operatic soundtrack, which melds perfectly to the action on screen, and the photography, which is actually a presence in this film. Never known for a definable visual schema, Allen has had wonderfully photographed films (Manhattan, Interiors, and Crimes and Misdemeanors in particular); Match Point falls into that category. The framing Allen employs creates a sense of claustrophobia that encapsulates the characters appropriately.
Not quite as great as Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point is a fantastic film that, I hope, will get Woody Allen back on track for another great run of films. I shouldn't be greedy and should be happy with his extant body of work, but I await his films each year with bated breath, knowing that the next jewel is just around the corner.