Perhaps Allen's best film?

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2005)

Allen takes two unusual steps in this film, both of which have positive effects. He is not acting in it nor does he try to make an actor play an Allenesque part in it. The other is that the film is set in London and the English countryside, rather than in New York, and is effectively and accurately laced with the British social class obsessions and related accents. But it could happen in any society and at any time in which there exists matrimonially driven social mobility, and polygamy is not an option.
The plot is reminiscent of Stendhal's "Le rouge et le noir", in which a very bright and ambitious young man, Julian Sorel, ends up shooting - but only wounding - a woman with whom he had had an affair and who is threatening to ruin his prospects of a highly desirable marriage with a woman of the French aristocracy. Sorel, however, is punished for his deed and, even if genuinely repentant, ends up on the guillotine. The reverse of what happens to the hero of Match Point.
The philosophical message is that luck can trump justice. This may appear to be a truism for those of us who cannot bring themselves to believe either in the infallibility of human institutions or in the existence of a justice-driven divine design, but it is still hugely engaging to get a parable narrated at such high level of cinematic quality to remind us of that message. Consolation is not what this film has to offer.
The pace of the film is quick and even, and all absorbing. Allen shows a great ability for concision, and the editing is masterful. There is not a single fodder-shot that I could detect -- as good as Chabrol's best thrillers.
The choice of actors is close to perfection, and, assisted by a polished script, they all deliver with great professional skills easing the audience out of disbelief effortlessly and within the first minute of the film.
The film succeeds as the fiction classics do, by forcefully integrating many aspects of life into a single story. A sign of how much I liked it is that I have never written a film review before this one.