PLOT: In a rags-to-riches manoeuvre, Irish tennis pro marries into a rich English power family, only to risk his cushy status by lusting after a young American hottie. Their affair leads to a dangerous dance with fate.
Woody Allen has creatively transplanted himself to London, England, albeit with an American movie star in tow as his new on-screen muse and femme fatale.
The first results from this strange collaboration between the 70-year-old Allen and the emerging Hollywood superstar and sex siren Scarlett Johansson is Match Point. This clever, superbly-acted romantic thriller electrified Cannes and now looks poised to insert itself into the Oscar race.
It is the story of an ambitious tennis pro (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who has left the tour. Now giving lessons at a swank London club, he meets a rich playboy (Matthew Goode) who, in turn, introduces him to his single sister (Emily Mortimer) and his mercurial but sexually dynamic fiancee (Johansson).
Their inter-relationships will complicate all their lives, especially when Rhys-Meyers marries Mortimer but continues to lust after Johansson. Infidelity could have dire consequences.
There is a major misstep in the piece -- a fantasy scene near the end that deals awkwardly with the issue of guilt -- and that knocks a half-point off my rating. But, even with that unfortunate artistic choice, Match Point is a delicious and startling career revival.
Allen has not made a movie this involving for a decade, since Mighty Aphrodite. He has not made a movie this great since the 1980s, when he created such treasures such as Hannah And Her Sisters and Crimes And Misdemenours.
Allen's past few deadbeat U.S. efforts were often tiresome and repetitive and indulgent. The serious movies were silly and the comedies were dry and unfunny.
But moving to London to shoot Match Point -- as well as his next film with Johannson, a romantic entanglement called Scoop -- obviously infused Allen with a renewed vitality and gave him access to a new (to him) pool of British actors.
In addition to Rhys-Meyers, Mortimer and Goode, they include Brian Cox (gawd, this guy is wonderful in almost every role!) and Penelope Wilton as the highly involved parents of Mortimer and Goode.
As for the story, Allen's usual preoccupations, including fractured relationships and people who have difficulties reconciling their desires with their realities, are all in play in the new film. Yet they seem fresh again in this new context.
In part, that is because Match Point, with the exception of that one scene, is written with such skill, precision and intelligence that the film never loosens its grip.
The success of Match Point is also due to the uniformly exhilarating performances, from Rhys-Meyers' bottled, brooding melancholy to Goode's boyish exuberance to Johansson's smoldering passion to Mortimer's desperate sweetness. A key point: Because of the setting and his own Irish heritage, Rhys-Meyers is not obliged to do one of those odious Woody Allen imitations, as so many of his American leading men have done lately.
On a larger scale, instead of following past patterns in an Allen opus, each actor conjures the right energy and sensibility for each scene to play without adornment.
On a technical level, Allen's camera movements are fluid and effortless. The editing is subtle. The taut through-line of the film is mesmerizing. Even his obvious metaphor -- a tennis volley in which the ball hits the net and either lucks its way over or falls back -- is delivered with class, both visually and in the narration.
Welcome back, Woody Allen.
BOTTOM LINE: At 70, Woody Allen's career revival is not only surprising, it is completely out of character because it meant a creative transplant to England. But the result, except for one misstep, is engrossing.
(This film is rated PG)
