An Excellent Film that almost no one will actually want to see.

Rating: 9/10 (8 February 2006)

* * * ½ Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a young but retired pro tennis player who now teaches the sport has a romantic spark with Chloe (Emily Mortimer), the sister of one of his clients, Tom (Matthew Goode). She falls deeply for him, and he kind of does for her until he meets Tom's fiancée, Nola (Scarlett Johansson), with whom he becomes obsessed. He eventually marries Chloe anyway, but goes on a reckless path that will take him down a more tragic hole than he ever imagined.
This London-set Woody Allen thriller --- woah, woah woah, wait a second. Woody Allen thriller?! A Woody Allen film set in London?! The world must be coming to an end.
Of course, I didn't laugh all that often during his films anyway, but I digress.
Actually, it's a cold, dark, realistic, slowly-paced (a little too slow) character drama that turns into a heck of a thriller in the last third. For the first part, Allen keeps the relationships utterly believable. Never once does the film get soap opera-ish, melodramatic, or less than three-dimensional. And because of the total realism and the passions the characters show, it's involving in spite of its cold harshness. Rhys-Meyers and Johannson are both superb, perfectly showing ever facet of their characters and completely disappearing into them. The supporting cast does the same.
And then, it twists into an absolutely riviting, heart-pounding thriller. Allen the writer gives Allen the director something to play with, and he does it brilliantly. The climactic scene is one of the most intense moments ever filmed in spite of how low-key it is. It's really stunning.
And both parts --- the drama and the thriller --- are a series of emotional punches to both the head and the heart. In short, in spite of the film's flaws (primarily it's slightly too-slow pace), it's a truly excellent film.
And, now that I've praised it like nothing else, I'm going to tell you that you probably don't want to watch it.
Why? Because it really is a slow, realistic, super-art house flick. If it isn't your kind of film, stay away. It's only kind of my sort of film, and I really liked it, but I'm more open to this kind of film than most people.
And, because it's one of those films where the point is that there is no point in life, it's completely unsatisfying unless you are totally cynical.
(Now, from Allen's worldview, that's a totally logical conclusion. I don't agree, but we the world very differently, and this shows that he's very observant about the way the world works.) And Woody Allen fans won't like it, at least not if they're expecting an Allen film. It's dead serious. There's practically no humor whatsoever (appropriately).
So, anyway, it's an excellent movie that, chances are, you do not want to see. But if you like deadly-serious films that take a lot of patience and effort to watch but reward that patience with powerful emotional responses and stomach-churning suspense, you should love it.
As for the other 99.9% of you out there, run, don't walk, in the opposite direction from the film. You will fall asleep, miss the good parts, and your snoring will create enemies out of everyone else in the theater.
Both of them.