Café Society
Director: Woody Allen
Talent: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively
Release Date: 2nd September
Despite dividing itself between dual nostalgic depictions of 1930s Los Angeles and New York, Café Society nonetheless speaks to an altogether different ambivalence at the heart of Woody Allen’s filmmaking sensibility. In it, Los Angeles newbie Bobby (Eisenberg) falls for the incongruous Vonnie (Stewart), a young woman whose humility and cynicism about fame and glamour he is instantly captivated by. And as is the nature of the romantic comedy, so too, supposedly, are we. Oddly however, the film surrounding their romance seems entirely in thrall to ‘the magic of the movies’ and Hollywood’s golden age. Allen, providing voiceover duties here, fawns over his sun-drenched west coast setting in a mood bereft of all irony. It comes across as naive: from Sunset Boulevard to Chinatown and beyond, Allen’s picture-book Hollywood simply does not exist any more in the cinematic imagination. Here is the uneasiness that so often rears its head in his work: he is cynical, but not in the way he would like to think. Thus, his rose-tinted requiem for pre-WW2 showbiz comes across as sickly, his romances monstrous.
It does not help that Allen’s narration recapitulates plotlines to the point of insipidity. Bobby’s romance with Vonnie is hampered when she tells him she has a boyfriend, and Allen’s voiceover reminds us in the next scene. Vonnie’s boyfriend turns out to be Bobby’s uncle Phil (Carell): Allen, ever attentive, will not let us forget the detail before it becomes relevant again in the next sequence. But as a romantic narrative, the film lives and dies on its lead performances, and frankly neither Stewart nor Eisenberg do much to captivate. The latter is a predictably unsympathetic Allen facsimile, while the former’s charm is relegated in the main to the aesthetic, by a script largely unconcerned with women’s experiences, outside of falling in love with men, marrying and falling pregnant. They call this ‘late period’ Woody Allen, which seems a little hopeful to me. The prolific director is asleep at the wheel here, but the car, alas, isn’t moving.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
