The long promised return to form

Rating: 9/10 (22 April 2006)

Now affectionately known as his 'London picture', presumably to distinguish it from all those other 'Noo Yawk' pictures, "Match Point" is unmistakably Allen. He has said that originally he wrote it for a New York setting and that the changes for London were purely cosmetic, and in doing so he has alienated a large number of British critics who feel that Allen's high-brow, intellectual, art-orientated dialogue doesn't ring true in a British setting. Rubbish! This smart, intelligent film is worth a hundred Richard Curtis rom-coms and it's Allen's understanding of what humanizes his characters that makes it so.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is the tennis coach who through good looks, better manners and an excess of guile, not to mention extraordinary luck, worms his way into the affections of a reliably realistic upper-class British family and in particular into the bed of the sweetly vacant daughter. From here on his trajectory can only be upwards until he falls in love the son's American fiancée, (a fabulously willful Scarlett Johansson). Then the waters muddy.
This is Allen in a serious mode. There are no deliberate laughs, though the irony of the later scenes isn't entirely lost. Nor are the allusions to Dostoyevsky whom we see the hero reading at the beginning. The material isn't particularly new either, (he covers similar ground in "Crimes and Misdemeanours"), but the movie is so intelligent and accurate that it represents something of that return to the form we have been waiting for, (as did last year's "Melinda and Melinda" and this is a step-up from that).
As ever Allen confirms his position as one of the greatest of all directors of actors. Here he has a superb ensemble. Rhys Meyers has his best part so far and makes the most of it and Johansson turns what could have been a shrew into a multi-faceted, vulnerable young woman. The family Rhys Meyers wheedles his way into, eventually through marriage, is superbly represented by Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton, (parents), and Matthew Goode and Emily Mortimer (siblings). Again in the hands of a lesser writer, (Richard Curtis, perhaps?), these people could so easily have been the most basic of caricatures but Allen bestows on them a kind of gentle affection; they are nice people for all their wealth, looks and sense of class. The mother's rejection of Scarlett Johansson as a potential daughter-in-law is only in part based on her feelings that she is 'beneath' them, (so, too, is Meyers, but he has potential). Rather, perhaps, she sees in her that fundamental lack of stability she later comes to display. And there are pleasing cameos, too, from the likes of Margaret Tyzack and James Nesbitt.
Allen, himself, feels "Match Point" may be his best picture. For those of us who still feel "Interiors", "Manhatten" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo" are masterpieces that may seem something of a blinkered boast. Nevertheless, Allen working at a level just below his very best is still someone who can whip most of the opposition into a corner.