MATCH POINT d: Woody Allen

Match Point (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Woody Allen
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton
 

 

If Alfred Hitchcock were to direct a screenplay co-written by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, the result would be something like Woody Allen’s latest opus, Match Point. A dark fable about the vagaries of chance in a godless world, Allen’s aesthetically old-fashioned crime drama belies a haunting postmodern sensibility.
Set in London, the basic plot of Match Point follows certain key elements of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy: After experiencing the joys of wealth and high social standing (read: power), an ambitious petit bourgeois resorts to whatever it takes to maintain his newfound status. Between the [...]

by Andre Soares | December 17, 2005   
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MATCH POINT II – Jonathan Rhys Meyers

MATCH POINT: Part I
Alternating with equal ease between femme fatale, sex object, and neurotic nag, Scarlett Johansson delivers what is arguably her most effective film performance to date. Both Emily Mortimer and Matthew Goode (a stage-trained actor who’s a — more likable — cross between Hugh Grant and Rupert Everett) provide solid support as the Hewett siblings — too privileged to be distrustful, too likable to be despicable — and so does Brian Cox as the generous Hewett patriarch. But it’s Penelope Wilton who steals the show whenever she’s on screen. A milder (British) version of the domineering mothers of several of Woody Allen’s New York-based comedies, Wilton’s outspoken matriarch is always meddling in her children’s affairs.
Much has been said [...]

by Andre Soares | December 17, 2005   
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