GONE TO SEED : Woody Allen’s ‘Match Point’ [4/10]

Published on: January 3rd, 2006

Woody Allen tries to take a leaf out of Robert Altman's playbook – with intriguing but ultimately disappointing results – in Match Point, a sleek, well-appointed psychological drama set among the moneyed upper strata of modern-day London.

Midway through his eight decade, Altman staged an unexpected career-revivals when he decamped to 'Blighty' for Gosford Park (2001) – a convoluted tale of murder among the aristocracy of an earlier era which earned him his fifth Oscar nomination as Best Director. If Allen follows suit – and at the time of writing several top pundits reckon it's likely – this would be his seventh such nod, while an Original Screenplay nomination (also very probable) would be his fourteenth.

Match Point's leading lady Scarlett Johansson, meanwhile, is regarded among the front-runners for Supporting Actress – partly as compensation after being passed over for 2003's Lost In Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's a shame, then, that her work here is distinctly ho-hum – much like the movie, which isn't by any means the glorious return to form so many Allen acolytes have been desperate to proclaim. Indeed, Match Point is on balance even less satisfying than his last release, the patchy Melinda & Melinda, and falls a long way short of what Altman pulled off with Gosford Park.

Because while Altman had the benefit of a screenplay written by Julian Fellowes – a Brit who knew his terrain (geographical and thematic) inside out – writer-director Allen is alll on his own. And while his direction is competent in a slick, glossy manner, it's nowhere near enough to hide the shortcomings of a script where too much of the dialogue rings false, the motivations of the main character are nebulous and unconvincing, and the final act declines into a sort of melodramatic, homicidal farce (complete with a thuddingly Bergman-esque dream-sequence). 

Even early on, there are warning signs aplenty: a character is seen reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the inclusion of such a moment having become in recent years a reliable litmus-indicator for a film-maker who's run out of fresh ideas. What we end up with here is a rather sub-Patricia Highsmith concoction – a cross between her Tom Ripley books (following the rise of a murderous, upwardly-mobile young sociopath) and Hitchcock's film of her novel Strangers on a Train: adapting the book for the screen, Raymond Chandler changed her hero from an architect to a star tennis-player.

In Match Point the racket is wielded by charming Irish ex-pro Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who – after a spell trotting the globe – takes a job at an upscale London club. One of his pupils is Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), scion of a very wealthy family, brother of Chloe (Emily Mortimer) and fiance of struggling American actress Nola (Johansson). Chris and Chloe become friendly, then intimate; he's offered lucrative employment by her father Alec (Brian Cox). In contrast to the volatile Nola, the silky-smooth Chris impresses Alec's wife Eleanor (Penelope Wilton) – even more so when he and Chloe become engaged. Their future would seem rosy – if it weren't for the fact that Chris is passionately in love not with Chloe but with the off-limits Nola…

Much like Chris – who gets by on the basis that it's better to be lucky rather than good – Match Point has sufficient charm to coast along quite nicely for a while: London looks just fine through Remi Adefarasin's camera, a cultural wonderland of fancy restaurants, arthouse cinemas, cutting-edge galleries and beautiful people. There are flashes of Allen's old Manhattan (Manhattan) wit in some of the dialogue, as when we hear of a couple whose happiness is ascribed to their intertwining neuroses. And – in a cast where many famous British faces pop up in brief, sometimes even wordless cameos (eyes peeled for League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss as an amusingly silent ping-pong player), Cox, Wilton, Mortimer and Goode are entirely believable as the posh, complacent, genial Hewetts.

Unfortunately for us, however, it's Rhys-Meyers and Johansson who have to carry the burden of the increasingly-lurid plot – and the pair are much easier on the eye than they are on the ear, Rhys-Meyers in particular being saddled with the picture's worst, phoniest dialogue. He's a talented performer on his day, but isn't quite up to making Chris into a three-dimensional person – rather than just a morose/verbose vehicle for Allen's ham-fisted speculations on human nature, guilt, justice and fate (the latter here often taking the form of wild coincidence).

It doesn't help that we get only the sketchiest information about Chris's background – especially in comparison with, say, Highsmith's creations, or Ira Levin's Bud Corliss from A Kiss Before Dying (another literary Match Point reference-point.) We never really get to know him at all – which is perhaps part of the reason why the way he goes about solving his various problems in the final act comes across as so jaw-droppingly ludicrous.

Almost on a par, indeed, with that that priceless showstopper near the end of David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner when a pair of Japanese 'tourists' suddenly produce a hand-held rocket-launcher. Mamet, like Allen, is a very talented writer on his day – but even the very best can look mighty foolish when they dabble in a genre that's not conducive with their gifts. And whereas Altman, typically, got away with it, Allen isn't quite so fortunate – and what's really sad is that Match Point's flaws are more a matter of bad judgement than bad luck.

Neil Young
3rd January, 2005

MATCH POINT : [4/10]* : UK (UK/Lux) 2005 : Woody ALLEN : 124 mins (BBFC timing)
seen at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 3rd January 2006 – press show

original rating 5/10; downgraded to 4/10, 9th January – the more you think about it, the shoddier it seems.