MATCH POINT REVIEW

The Match Point review I posted earlier has inspired me to write one of my own. I'll try to write capsule movie reviews for some/most/all (that pretty much covers the spectrum) of the movies that I see this year).

So, without further ado:

Match Point, which opened Christmas Day of 2005, is the story of a whiny, self-hating Jew whose sister, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was used as a human toilet by a strange man, as he taunted her with unfunny Auschwitz jokes while flashing his obscene WASP wealth at her neurotic face....

Ooops. Sorry. Wrong movie. Had you going there, didn't I?

Actually, several of the tropes I've mentioned above that have featured so prominently in Allen's work - the self-hating neurotic (often a Jew, played by Allen or a younger alter-ego); the scenery (a physically and mentally cloistered upper Manhattan); the signature schlemiel jokiness (in which Allen illustrates the absurdity of a character or a situation by comparing it either to Hitler, Himmler, or some other iconographic Holocaust reference), are entirely absent in this, Allen's 40th film, the first to be shot and staged entirely away from New York City.

The film takes place in, and was shot, in London (Allen's first draft had the film taking place in the Hamptons, which for him still constitutes a major life change - kind of like marrying a daughter-in-law instead of a daughter). The title - "Match Point" refers to that moment in a tennis game at which a player is one play away from winning a game. If a game is even at this point, then whoever wins the point wins the game. If the ball, once served, hits the net, carries forward, and is not successfully lobbed back by the opponent, the server wins; if the ball, when it hits the net, bounces back into the server's half of the court, the opponent wins.

This rule is explained by the film's protagonist/antagonist (prantagonist), Chris Wilton, who is described as a poor boy from Ireland who "worked his way up" by becoming a professional tennis player. Chris, we learn, did pretty well on the pro circuit - he even played Agassi and some other (fictitious) great player a few times, but never rose to their level, and eventually, realizing he had hit a glass ceiling in this line of work, retired.

When we meet Chris, which is when the movie opens, he is explaining the rule not to explain to us his mastery of tennis rules, but to illustrate what he believes to be a key to understanding the way the world works: hard work, he says, is all good and well, but it is luck that ultimately determines our fate. Luck - which is what ultimately accounts for the ball going either over the net or back to the server's side - truly determines what we are destined to bcome - our social position, our happiness, how long we will live, and so on, and therefore, one can only "make one's own fate" to the extent that luck permits one to.

This thesis - a wrinkle on Allen's thesis from Crimes and Misdemeanors that because God does not exist, good deeds go unrewarded and evil goes unpunished, is not ladled on with heavy-handed symbolism as the thesis was in that earlier film, with its constant usage of biblical references and Nietzchiean speechifying about how God has abandoned us.

Instead, Allen presents the thesis in a different - and much more entertaining format - while still ensuring that his message gets across.

When Chris arrives at a posh tennis club in London, he is given a job as a personal trainer to selected obscenely wealthy clientele; the job consists of as much of stroking these richies' massive egos as it does volleys across the net. One day, Tom is assigneed a new client: Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode, Chasing Liberty), scion to - you guessed it - an obscenely wealthy family, headed by generically affable patriarch Alec (Brian Cox, toning down the decibel level, whose wife, Eleanor (Penelope Wilton), in her casually offhanded rudeness, makes an interestingly stiff counterpoint to her husband.

Tom and Chris volley a few lobs over the net, and then, over cocktails, discuss their interests: it turns out that both are opera lovers, and are fond of Dostoyevsky (no Allen movie would be complete without a literary reference to an author whose name inspires mass vomiting). Chris mentions both subjects first, leading Tom to say, "Really? I love opera/Dostoyevsky too!" Did Chris somehow know beforehand that Tom would become his client? Was it just luck that the two had these interests in common? Allen doesn't say.

Tom decides to invite Chris to the opera house, where his family has a box that can seemingly hold the entire cast of Carmen. Present at this box are Chris' sister, the mousily merry Chloe (Emily Mortiner), and Tom's fiance Nola Rice (Scarlett Johnasson), a struggling American actress from Colorado who is Tom's girlfriend. Eleanor, we learn, disapproves of Nola, which may account for why the two appear to be so passionately in love.

But other passions are astir that night as well, or so it seems. Chloe, who has been groomed, like a brood mare, by her parents, to find a husband, is instantly smitten by Chris, and lets him know in no uncertain terms. The two arrange for a date, and eventually get married. Alec and Eleanor are only too happy to give their blessing to this marriage, largely because they too have fallen for Chris, who, in a span of just weeks has charmed them by appearing to be humble, modest, and genuinely appreciative of their generosity toward them (a generosity displayed thanks to Chloe's expressed concern to her parents that Chris was not "to the manor born") without coming off as needy. Chris, though, is playing a part - he realizes that the Hewetts are his meal ticket to a life of extravagance and comfort, and if he can feign genuine affection for Chloe (to whom he is not remotely attracted), while playing the part of the "boy who built himself up from nothing" (an arc which much impresses Chloe's father, probably because he has never once had to wonder what it means to BE nothing), he can marry into a life of his dreams.

The act works, the marriage is consummated. But all is not well for Chris, right from the start. At the night at the opera, he eyes Nola. She eyes him. There is an instant, primal attraction - the French call it a thunderbolt - a simultaneous expression of passionate recognition where two people are saying to each other, "You're the one I really want. I may be with someone else, but that person is something. I may not act on this "thunderbolt" - this sudden flash of having seen you - but it is stored for future reference and marked. The clock has started ticking."

While Chris acts the part of dutiful fiance, Chloe frets as her own acting career seemingly goes nowhere. She blows one audition after another. After a particularly painful rejection, Eleanor (who has had a little too much of what the British call "G&T") verbally lacerates her - this vulgar American actress - who should "realize by now" that if "it hasn't happened already," it isn't going to. Eleanor, after all, is a "realist," which is why she can be so tactless (she can also be a "realist" because she has the money to live in the kind of fantasy world in which tactlessless is not seen as tactlessness, a fact unnoted by anyone in her family). Her tongue lashing of Nola leads Nola to run into the woods of the Hewett family's absurdly huge estate. Tom - who has conveniently disappeared - does not chase after her to comfort her. Instead, Chris, with lust in his mind, runs after her. They meet. They bleat. They roll in the hay. It does not take all day, but it takes long enough for the hall to have been rented, the orchestra engaged: Chris' heretofore unimperiled climb up to la dolce vita has just been shaken by a giant curveball.

Shortly after Chris gets married, Tom dumps Nola (to please his mother), who then leaves town. A few weeks later, she mysteriously reappears at the Tate Modern Museum. Chris happens to spot her there while he is touring the museum with Chloe. The two chat for a while and agree to see each other at her place. Thus begins a series of brief encounters, which take place on Chris' work lunch hour (Chris works at one of his father-in-law's companies; you did realize that nepotism would figure into this story somehow, didn't you?) When Chris returns home each day from his mixture of frenetic fornication and finance, it is a return to a loveless life with Chloe, who for reasons unexplained, is obsessed with having a baby, and who has conscripted Chris into the role of biathlon sperm depositor as the two go fertility doctor shopping without success.

Eventually, Chris succeeds in putting the proverbial bun in the oven, but the only problem is that it is the wrong oven - Nola's. Nola, who wants a life with Chris, and who wants the baby (she has already had two abortions; one of the was Tom's baby) now has a real ace in her hand: she tells Chris that if he does not tell Chloe that he wants to end his relationship with her, that she will reveal their affair and her pregnancy. Never mind the fact that the Hewetts don't really like her (actually, only Eleanor doesn't); the revelation that Tom is THIS kind of cad does not only make him an adulterer (still a "no-no," if only for the sake of keeping up appearances); it makes him, in the eyes of the otherwise blindsided Hewetts, a fraud and exposes his freeloading. This cannot happen.

The movie gently pauses to note: Chris cannot conceive with Chloe, yet he conceived with Nola with almost no difficulty. Luck? Tom, after dumping Nola, married a woman who hired a nanny to watch over Tom's new baby. The nanny quickly left Tom's employ after getting pregnant and having - a baby of her own. Some luck there too? Good luck? For who?

Nola begins to call Chris. At the Hewetts' home. At Chris and Chloe's apartment (an almost pornographic piece of real estate overlooking the Thames). Even this obviously oblivious family begins to realize that Chris' taking all of these private calls means that he is hiding something. Finally, Chloe suspects an affair. Eventually, Chris, who cannot reconcile the womens' competing demands, calls Nola with good news: he has told Chloe the marriage is over, and that he is coming by once Nola gets home from work. Nola is delighted.

When Chris arrives, she and one other resident of her flat turn out to be disappointed. I will say no more, for to do so would to reveal plot secrets that are in store. I can only say that upon the arrival of Chris at Nola's flat, Allen's theme of the all-controlling nature of luck kicks into high gear, asserting itself with a ferocity that leads to a climax that is by turns suspenseful, tragic, and gloriously amoral. And THIS leads to a denoument with a twist ending that simultaenously comes out of nowhere and plays eminently fair. It's a beautfiul way of ending the movie, one which confirms Allen's thesis while managing to ingeniously wrap up a few loose ends of the plot.

Strange. The way the ending - which rests upon a key piece of dialogue - was written - is such that its plausibility depended upon our believing in, and remembering, a rather bizarre sequence of events occuring at various stages throughout the film. That the ending works is a testament to how well-constructed these earlier parts - which did not seem like pieces of a puzzle -were shaped. Is this meticulous construction a product of good screenwriting, or luck? Did luck enable the good screenwriting?

Allen turned 70 while shooting the film. When he was asked whether being older had brought him any special wisdom, he said, "I think it's such such banal garbage - the idea that with age comes wisdom - I've learned nothing in my later years." This non-observation - actually a great observation, which is reflected in the film (which firmly believes that the world spits out more and more evil, and that wisdom is powerless in its face) - is a product of the fact that Allen has lived so long, something which has turned out, as Match Point demonstrates, to be good luck for him, but more importantly, for us.