Less here than meets the eye

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2013)

"Match Point" has a well-constructed story and good writing, and I found it generally entertaining. The professional reviewers cited it for its dark exploration of the role of fate and chance in our lives, but without Woody Allen actually making it clear that this is his theme, as he does on a few occasions in the film, the movie is not particularly deep. Basically it boils down to the story of a young married man's obsession with a sexy Other Woman. Eventually it evolves into a thriller.
As often happens in Woody Allen's dramas, it is difficult to care about his characters. The young man, Chris, is fixated on rising in the world, though he has only vague notions of what he wants to do and is easily seduced by the wealth and luxury of his wife's family and the plum job handed to him by his father in law. The Other Woman, Nola, is distinguished mainly for her sexiness. There's no question of love between her and Chris.
Nor, for that matter, does Chris really love his wife, whom he damns with faint praise by calling her "sweet." Sweet she may be, but even she tried my patience.
It's an emotionally arid, cold movie with not much to say about chance, luck, and fate except that chance occurrences do happen.
The worst thing about the movie, for me, was the unrelenting opera music on the soundtrack--loud and passionately insistent as only opera can be. I found the music irritating, distracting me from what was after all a pretty intricate story with some tense moments.