CAFE SOCIETY (Woody Allen). 96 minutes. Opens Friday (July 29). See listing. Rating: N
Full disclosure: I stopped reviewing Woody Allen movies in 2009 (with Whatever Works) because I ran out of things to say about them. But after seven years I figured I should try again. Its not like Ive stopped watching them, after all, though mostly Ive been catching up with each new film on disc when year-end awards voting rolls around.
So I went to see Cafe Society, and honestly, I should have stayed home. Allens approach to filmmaking hasnt changed at all: he barely directs his actors, he doesnt care about pacing or structure, and he long ago stopped trying to represent human behaviour in any realistic manner. He remains firmly, frustratingly fixated on the same handful of topics: guilt, shame, class, jazz and older men sleeping with younger women.
Cafe Society configures those themes as the story of Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), who comes to Hollywood in the 1930s to work for his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a hotshot agent. Bobby is determined to seduce Phils employee Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), who is secretly Phils mistress. Meanwhile, back home in the Bronx, Bobbys gangster brother Ben (Corey Stoll) is killing people to get into the nightclub business, because Allen remembers how much people liked the contrast of venal and mortal sins in Crimes And Misdemeanors.
Directors are allowed to have favourite themes, of course, but most of them are better at weaving them into the fabric of a movie. Allens characters just talk them out subtext is for the young, I suppose. And as happens increasingly often in his films, the lack of any real artistic over-sight leads Allen down some very weird paths.
Cafe Society has a scene in which Pitch Perfects Anna Camp shows up as a novice prostitute summoned to the lonely Bobbys door only to have him shame her for her line of work and refuse to have sex because theyre both Jewish. Shes never seen again, and I have no idea what Allen thinks that scene is about.
I have no idea what Allen thinks the entire movie is about. Yes, Vittorio Storaro makes Old Hollywood look sun-dappled and gorgeous, and the period fashions look especially great on the likes of Stewart, Camp and Blake Lively, who shows up in the last third of the film as a wealthy divorcee. But Cafe Society isnt about anything other than Allens own self-indulgence. Its not even about cafes most of the picture takes place in bars and clubs.
Anyway, thats me out. Assuming were both still working, Ill check back with him in 2023.
