Allen's best film ever. May be spoilers.

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2005)

It is extraordinary that a film maker as skilled and experienced as Woody Allen has after 36 years and some 40 movies as writer/director, made his Masterpiece. Hannah And Her Sisters, Crimes And Misdemeanors, Husbands And Wives, Annie Hall are undeniably superb, but with Match Point, Allen has risen to a very high level indeed.
Two things immediately set this film apart from his others: He doesn't act in it, and he has chosen London--not his beloved New York or Paris--in which to unravel this story of steaming lust, lethal ambition, and numbing irony. Johnathan Rhys-Meyers is Chris Wilton, a tennis pro who will never reach the top and has thus insinuated himself into the upper-crust world of Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer), daughter of a very successful business man (Brian Cox). Her brother has an American girlfriend, Nola, (a brilliant Scarlet Johansson) who is voluptuous, reckless and willful, and who is drawn to Chris. They have a brief fling, but the ambitious Chris goes on to marry Chloe and to take a position in her father's company. He's beyond his class but adapts quickly and has some success. Chloe badly wants to have a child but they have trouble conceiving. Nola, a budding actress, breaks up with Chloe's brother and disappears into her theatre world in London until a chance encounter with Chris leads to an entangled affair that leaves him desperate to find a way out. This is further complicated when Nola becomes pregnant. What ensues is intense, gripping, and bizarrely logical.
Woody Allen has captured the louche flippancy and fluent ease of the rich and privileged while punctuating this tale with a dark undercurrent rarely seen in his films. There's a wonderful foreshadowing scene early on that resonates ironically in the fevered machinations of Chris to extricate himself from the Hell he has created. The script is seamless--not a word is out of place--and the music frames the story around visits to the opera. For once Allen forsakes vintage 30's jazz for passages from Verdi and Rossini. The settings and costumes are spot on and the pace of the film is impeccable. Brilliant editing.
I think the writing and directing are Oscar caliber, as is Johansson's performance. I saw Match Point here in France. I'd like to be in New York when there will be (Nov. 29) a special screening at Lincoln Center with Allen fielding comments and questions from the audience. This should create quite a buzz and stir for old Woody. Imagine: at 70 years he's done a job that Hitchcock might envy.