Sourdough and Lazy

Rating: 6/10 (16 February 2000)

For many years, Woody Allen was a chouchou for our snobs who, even in remote suburbia, want his movies in English (with subtitles). However, the audience seems to diminish since the Kafkaian SHADOWS AND FOG; after a nice come back with BULLETS IN MANHATTAN, Woody seems to tackle now with another giant of literature, Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his best books, FICTIONS, JLB wrote about lands who do not exist (Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius), books never written (The Books of Herbert Quain)and careers of people absent from any encyclopaedia (Pierre Menard, author of the real Don Quixote). Abiding to his taste, Woody Allen has picked up a jazz guitar player supposed to be No.2 after Django Reinhardt, and joins three jazz specialists to describe his career, his loves and his failures. This enables us to hear some fine performances by Bucky Pizzarelli (unnoticed by many, for his name appears only in a flash on the ending titles, alas never played to their entirety, with largest regrets for LIMEHOUSE BLUES). The main character, a womanizer, a pimp and a kleptomaniac,never touches us with admirations,regrets or understanding, leaving room only for Mr Allen's work, which is one of the poorest he ever gratified us with.Perhaps he should made less but better movies; but he seems to take the contrary steps, because he has two or three projects for 2000 and one for 2001. This one was not only uncomplete, it was frustrating in its best parts. My only consolation: the sublime Samantha Morton (Hattie, the dumb girl looking like Harpo Marx), who steals the show from Sean Penn (Emmet Ray) and even from Uma Thurman (Blanche Williams). Charlie Christian would have been a better bet (to me, he's the No 1 of all times). But most of the jazz biographies filmed to date (Goodman, Miller, Krupa, etc)are mainly hagiographies; Michael Curtiz (YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN)and Otto Preminger (MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM) were more ambitious, but only Clint Eastwood went somewhere with BIRD (Charlie Parker). henry caraso