good luck all the way round

Rating: 9/10 (7 October 2007)

Scarlett Johansson has never been this good. While a supremely sympathetic presence, this actress usually displays a narrow set of skills at let's-pretend. In her defense, she usually is not asked to do more than look pretty and not stutter. But she certainly works best in modern idiom, and she has been practicing for this one. Here, as in "Lost in Translation", she plays a woman more sensual than enlightened, isolated in a foreign city, confusing sex with communion and reeling on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her performance this time is daring and revelatory. So is the work of Woody Allen, at least to many who view "Match Point" as a violent departure from his usual style. But this is not primarily a sex thriller; this is a story about fate vs intention, a theme shared by all of Allen's good movies, and he too has been working on this one for a long time.
He has made thrilling entertainments before: "Bullets Over Broadway", "Manhattan Murder Mystery", "Sweet and Lowdown", "Crimes and Misdemeanors", all have some sense of danger. And his movies have always contained a lot of sex. Just picking from the last twenty or so, "Hannah and Her Sisters", "Husbands and Wives", "Deconstructing Harry" and "Anything Else" each contain some hot stuff, and not always to comic effect. True, "Match Point" is surprisingly fluent in the language of the crime story, from desperate lovers to novice criminals to clever detectives. But while expertly executed, these are devices used as decoration rather than framework. And though he doesn't tell us any jokes this time, so many of the dependable Allen elements are in place: the ubiquitous music, now opera instead of the usual jazz; the ensemble of literate intellectuals, mildly camouflaged as Londoners instead of Manhattanites; the infelicitous indiscretion, once again within an intimate circle of friends; the strained marriage, shot through with infidelity and unrequited passion. Allen has given himself comfortable ground on which to hunt his favorite game: a man who can't be happy with success, whose joust with fate leads him (nearly or completely) to destroy all he has. It is the old story of hubris, and there are even Greek references lest we miss the classical implications of the theme.
While one of our most accomplished writers and directors, even Allen has stretches of bad luck. Over the course of forty years' work, there have been sometimes two or three movies in a row that aren't worth watching. Dionysius doesn't always smile. But many things happen in "Match Point" that speak of all Thespian gods' favorable intentions. The cast was perfectly timed, plucking Jonathan Rhys-Myers, Ms Johansson, and Emily Mortimer at the height of ripeness; the supporting cast is one of the great recent collections of British acting power, a coup in which Ewan Bremner, Matthew Goode, Penelope Wilton and James Nesbitt are merely standouts. So too are the other departments in eerily excellent form - the writing is subtle, careful, and mostly absent of Allen's tendency toward protagonistic self-exploration; the sets, costumes and props speak volumes about theme, action and character; English weather even seems to have cooperated to make this piece of theater possible, with ample sunshine at the country locations. And that's no small piece of fortune.
Allen does something else here that's worth noting. As this isn't just a crime melodrama, so it is not a simple morality play. The good guy, who turns into a bad guy, succeeds at being bad. He wins. There is not much to suggest that Mr Rhys-Myers' character is very damaged by tweaking fate's beard. Indeed there is some evidence that he grows and completes his hero's journey as a result of his petulance. Now that's either the sophomoric conclusion of an unsophisticated auteur, or the considered revelation of a veteran artist.