For the first Cineclub of the New Year, Emma and I recently saw Match Point (Warning: Spoilers discussed with little fanfare, but you really don't want to see this film. Promise):
Emma: So: we went into Match Point with no specific expectations. And you're not particularly a Woody Allen fan - so what impression did this give?
Lauren: Emma, as you know, I freaking hated this movie. It was tedious and completely meaningless.
Emma: I'm listening!
Lauren: I mellowed out slightly after a day as my displeasure receded from immediate memory, but not that much....Why was this film made? Why was it financed? How does it advance human civilization? All unclear.
Emma: Hee hee. Certainly, the film deserves your disdain. As for me, I found it bad, but in a funny, so bad it's good kind of way. It was an embarrassment for start to finish - and that amused me!
Lauren: Well, I think it was sort of amusing to you because you grew up in London.... whereas I felt like Woody Allen went in for the usual pitch and they were like, "No way are we producing another Upper East Side character-driven relationship melodrama. Uh-uh."
Emma: Right!
Lauren: And so he was like, "Oh no, not at all... This one is in LONDON." I was just so bored. And then my boredom turned to irritation. I felt taken advantage of by the lame plot. And the wooden performances. Why does Rick Moody get picked on when Scarlett Johansson is the WORST EVERYTHING of her generation? I challenge her to write a novel!
Emma: Totally. There were two main choices made by Allen here that were the absolute height of arrogance: a) thinking he could accurately depict the British upper classes, which he did in a cliched, stupid way; and b) thinking he could play with the murder mystery genre without doing it properly.
Lauren: Yes. Totally. Can we talk about Scars and Jonno for a bit?
Emma: Please let's.
Lauren: I liked that when we went in and I said, "I am going to have trouble separating Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as an alleged underage girl beater and Scarlett as a total zero from their on-screen performances." and you were like, "I know -- that's the fun part!" It gave me hope.
Emma: They were both painfully unconvincing. You would think the fact that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is allegedly a violent psycho in real life would help him play one - but no!
Lauren: He did a wonderful job of playing a tremendous bore, though. I can see why he won a Golden Globe for Elvis -- perhaps he could have channeled Woody's penchant for underage girls this time around?
Emma: Ha, that would have helped!
Lauren: And Scarlett -- hasn't she ever heard of Method Acting? Her performance as "drunk whore" was utterly unconvincing, and I was so surprised. I read Star.
Emma: She thinks that an entire performance can be wrung from a cigarette and a pout. It cannot!
Lauren: Not in her case, at least. Even Juliette Lewis realized she'd have to start a band.
Emma: Which is working out well for her, unbelievably!
Lauren: The band? I know. They're pretty good. She sings cock rock. That's another story for another day.
Emma: Indeed - look, we can't even take Match Point seriously enough to keep on topic!
Lauren: I suppose that JRM and SJ did have good chemistry, compared to their relationships to their respective rich patrons.
Emma: It was OK! Dunno about good.
Lauren: Let's just make a list of what was boring and then we'll try and say some nice things, just to be polite, and then we can rate it.
Emma: Can we talk about the plot? Because there were some good and terrible things about it.
Lauren: Yes. Please do.
Emma: As you pointed out, one of the few interesting ideas in the film was the fact that Scarlett and Jonathan's characters both had their fates determined by being beholden to rich people.
Lauren: I thought the central conceit -- what happens when you take two people wholly dependent on other people in overlapping ways, and introduce a powerful sexual attraction and a willingness to sabotage everything in their lives just to act on it? -- to be provocative and intriguing. It could have been a pretty good Marxist critique. But alas, it was like a hopelessly out-of-touch 1930s movie played for laughs today-- we immediately started pointing out the egregious holes in the plot/case with abandon.
Emma: But did you buy that Jonathan's Chris Wilton would be driven to murder? I thought that was key, and I didn't, really.
Lauren: Oh, I did. Scarlett was SO UNSEXY once she got pregnant. Like I said, LIAR LIAR LIAR I WANT TO TALK TO CHLOE I WANT TO TALK TO CHLOE is definitely the new I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU.
Emma: It most certainly is! But yes, then, as you say, the cop drama that took over at that point was SO badly done.
Lauren: Except for the cute Scottish cops, who we granted a reprieve.
Emma: Yes! The Irish cop (James Nesbit) and the Scottish cop (Ewen Bremner) were a delight. But they wouldn't last five minutes on Law & Order with those investigative skills. No post mortem to find out Scarlett was pregnant? No interviewing her friends to find out she was due to meet her lover the night she was shot?
Lauren: Completely stupid and ridiculous. Also, it seemed to be very classist. When Jonathan/Chris was interrogated he kept saying, I am rich blah blah I am rich let's don't rock the boat now. And they were like, Okay.
Emma: Exactly! They were excessively co-operative.
Lauren: What about when the ghost of Scarlett haunted his kitchen?
Emma: Scarlett and the old woman.
Lauren: And then he gave that soliloquoy on the nature of guilt...
Emma: Painful!
Lauren: What about the depiction of British people, generally? I am very curious to hear your take.
Emma: Well, what you said about it being classist is interesting. It was certainly very stereotypical - posh people play tennis, work in undefined important jobs and drink expensive drinks. None of the characters were actually characters. Just symbols, and not very nuanced ones at that.
Lauren: I loved your assessment that no rich people just, you know, go to work in companies that are never named, that are constantly popping out plum assignments, structuring themselves into genius and highly lucrative new ventures, etc.
Emma: Right! We were never once told what Chris actually did, just that he had a secretary and a big office and salary!
Lauren: The idea of Chris Wilton as a social survivalist was so intriguing -- his move from poor boy to tennis player to club pro to fiance of a very rich young woman was seamlessly cool. And then Scarlett's Nola, largely on a very similar trajectory...
Emma: Too seamless, though! It was all so pat.
Lauren: Also: using work as an affair alibi when his wife's family owns the company? Bizarre!
Emma: Exactly - that typifies this film, and Allen's arrogantly sloppy approach.
Lauren: I think the script was just slapped together around a premise and that basically financiers are too willing to give Woody Allen money to make films.
Emma: You must be right. And the fact is, it's gotten good reviews, hasn't it? Unbelievable.
Lauren: If someone young, clever and enterprising took the script and re-tooled it as a stage production it could be powerfully affecting! Because there is a kernel of intrigue at the center of so much mediocrity.
Emma: Yes, you're right. In a way, it wanted to be like Closer. But that was a far superior play and film.
Lauren: Totally. It was the H&M to Closer's Topshop.
Emma: What a perfect analogy!
Lauren: Let's just cut it loose then shall we? I feel like we've given it more than its moment in the sun. Since we don't do halves, how about one peony?
Emma: Indeed. Yes, I think one is exactly what it deserves. And that's only for the police characters!
Lauren: Totally. None for Scarlett.
Emma: Negative for Scarlett!
Lauren: Dead flowers for her.
Emma: Dead, bad feng shui petals for Scarlett.
Lauren: Evil feng shui dried peonies for Hollywood's sweetheart!
Le Cineclub Rating:
(one out of a possible five peonies)
Previously: Walk The Line, A History of Violence, Shopgirl, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Nine Lives, Dandelion, Going Shopping, Green Street Hooligans.
You two are funny! Reading that was SOOOOO much better than the excrutiating pain that is actually watching a Woody Allen film. For my money he only ever made one good one: Purple Rose of Cairo and I suspect that if I were to see it again it would turn out to suck.
Please to go see more bad films!
Posted by: Justine Larbalestier | January 24, 2006 at 12:42 AM
Yes! Yes! Yes! My friend Linda and I saw it and we thought the same thing. What a bore on so many levels. Just ridiculous. --Kim
Posted by: Kim | January 24, 2006 at 01:31 AM
Great review. I wasn't planning on seeing it anyway. This just confirms my doubts only more so. Woody Allen has made me laugh in the past though and that's not a bad thing.
Posted by: Marco Romano | January 24, 2006 at 10:27 AM
This is great - I liked the film more than you, but I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that some of the things were intentional, like a faux murder story with the only real purpose being to show that you can't really become those rich people.
I can't say much about the upper British classes, but I have known some Americans (and I'm told the movie was originally to be set in the Hamptons) that were that kind of *seriously* rich, and they, like these characters, couldn't take anything seriously. Like the opera scenes - there was no emotion there, everyone just staring forward - they take their art as a matter of course or privilidge, as they do everything - there's no emotion or desire (except fertility, up until recently, something that money couldn't buy).
The guy wanted to be something he was not and he did indeed become something he was not, a murderer, but not what he thought he would become. The rich people were deliberately (of Allen) unaware (you're right about that work as an excuse when the family owns the company, and gee, the wife doesn't get that he's got a shotgun shell in his hand?), because they were self-absorbed - Chris was invisible to them, like poor people were invisible to them in their rich, monotone lives. That, I think was the point, anyway.
I also liked the "luck" conceit, particularly with the ring at the end. Although there was nothing about luck that put him there, it was pure deceit. The "Crime and Punishment" foreshadowing in the beginning set up the whole story, because that echoed the deceit, luck foil, on several levels.
Anyway, after having said all that rambling nonesense, I loved your review!
- Bud
Posted by: Bud Parr | January 24, 2006 at 10:33 AM
agreed. the movie was wrong on so many levels. it was a dumb highdea to make a movie that is fullof boring cliche crap until the last 60 seconds. that dorky twist was too little too late. duh.
Posted by: turgan | January 24, 2006 at 05:35 PM