Woody Allen’s ‘Café Society’

September in the UK often marks the general release of the Woody Allen’s most recent film, this year’s being Café Society, written, directed and narrated by Allen and also his first digital shooting. Set in the 1930s, it’s the story of a young New Yorker, Bobby Dorfman from the Bronx (Jesse Eisenberg), who sets off to Hollywood hoping for a job with his maternal uncle, Phil Stern. Phil is an agent with an impressive office and a secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), to match his success. Bobby turns out to be a dependable gofer and also starts to secure Vonnie’s affections, despite her already having a boyfriend in town. But before too long, Bobby discovers the identity of Vonnie’s on-off lover and abruptly returns to New York. Thanks to his gangster brother Ben, Bobby becomes a manager of a high society night club. He meets and marries one of the clients, another Veronica. One night, who should come into the club but Vonnie, now married to her lover. Bobby and Vonnie meet later and talk things over against the Manhattan backdrops Allen has made his own. Both being too sensible to jeopardise what they have, nothing worse befalls them than some bittersweet regrets for an unrequited love, whereas Ben gets his just deserts.

I thought Eisenberg was convincing as the ingénu in Tinsel Town, but lacked the presence needed to manage a high-class New York night spot. Stewart (last seen here as the PA in Clouds of Sils Maria) took every advantage offered by the part of Vonnie and carried the film. There were some vintage lines from Allen. The Dorfman family are probably stronger on one-liners than theology, for example when Bobby’s mother points out that “Too bad Jews don’t have an afterlife. They’d get a lot of business.” Another: “Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ But the examined one is no bargain.” The West Coast provided some splendid 1930s exterior locations, but some of the shots there and in New York were on the point of being overstocked and over-frocked with the period.

As for the ending, well there’s been a three hour time difference between the US East and West Coasts since the 1880s, even on New Year’s Eve. But then Allen’s Depression America, affluent and colourful, is not too constrained by the realities of the times, probably better depicted recently in Genius. Café Society is reportedly Allen’s 48th film. By comparison with his recent work, it’s a lot better than Magic in the Moonlight, and better than Irrational Man, but not as good as Blue Jasmine.

Woody Allen’s ‘Irrational Man’

Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) is a philosophy teacher with strains of Hunter S Thompson and Howard Kirk, Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man. The film starts as Abe is on his way to a lecturing job at Braylin College, an imaginary US campus where the only courses seem to be Chemistry and Philosophy 101, where the students live with their liberal intellectual parents in choicely furnished homes and the girls wear short summery dresses.

Abe is in a depressed state, even for the onset of early middle-age, such that his libido, a legend which had preceded his arrival, lets him down even when Rita Richards (Parker Posey), also on the faculty, gets herself into his bed at the earliest opportunity. Having to deliver lectures which make Philosophy for Dummies seem stretching can't do much for his angst but they make a big impression on the students, particularly Jill Pollard (Emma Stone). Abe and Jill become an item (openly and against college rules but no one seems to care), albeit platonic (not that he lectures about the Symposium, being more of a Sartre man). An Allenish cute encounter provides Abe with the chance to make the world a better place by an act of murder, a realisation which restores his masculine vitality.

How he commits this crime and how things subsequently go awry are revealed partly in retrospect by Jill and partly by narrative. The plot has some obvious shortcomings: not least you have to accept that Braylin is so laid back that anything can happen there and that Rita and Jill would be on such good terms when competing for the same man. If it had been told at a faster pace - not difficult - Irrational Man would have done nicely as one of the 30 minute pieces Allen is to make for Amazon.

As Allen's recent works go, Irrational Man is superior to Magic in the Moonlight, (and gave Emma Stone a better part) but not as good as Blue Jasmine. As with Magic in the Moonlight some of the shooting was in evening light, perhaps that is going to be a characteristic of late Allen. It was good to be reminded just how agreeable Rhode Island can be in the summer.

Woody Allen’s ‘Blue Jasmine’

After nearly three years, this is the 300th post on this blog, which is a surprise to me if no-one else!

Woody Allen’s latest film, Blue Jasmine, unlike To Rome with Love (2012) and Midnight in Paris (2011), is set in the US, and not only differs in locale but also in its tragi-comic tone from these and his other recent films. If Blue Jasmine has anything in common with earlier works, it might be with Interiors (1978) and Shadows and Fog (1991). These tend to be regarded as homages, the first to Bergman and the second to German Expressionist cinema, particularly that of Fritz Lang. Blue Jasmine also has its obvious roots: Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire.

In Williams’ play, Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans to tell her sister, Stella, that the family has lost its old Southern plantation money. Blanche takes a dislike to Stella's husband, Polish-American Stanley Kowalski, “Oh, I guess he’s just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume”. In turn, Stanley discovers Blanche's unsavoury past and finally has her committed to a mental institution.

In Allen’s film, Jasmine Francis, who has been living grandly in Manhattan, arrives in Los Angeles to stay with her adopted sister, Ginger. Jasmine’s husband has committed a Madoff-sized embezzlement, one of his many victims being Augie, Ginger’s Polish-American husband at the time. Ginger, now divorced, is dating Chili, who Jasmine doesn’t have much time for, thinking Ginger could do better. Both women eventually find that it’s unwise to depend on “the kindness of strangers".

Cate Blanchett (who played Blanche DuBois in Australia in 2009) is riveting as Jasmine, and her performance towers over those of the rest of the cast. In Allen’s films set in England he has displayed a tin ear for the British class system, with some unconvincing casting. Whether his portrayal of Americans as far removed from preppy Manhattanites as Chili and his working class friends is any more accurate, I can’t tell. Allen makes extensive use, almost overuse, of flashbacks and, very appropriately in this case, the soundtracks include New Orleans jazz standards by Armstrong and Oliver. I’m not sure the film is worth some of the reviews it’s been getting, probably because of Blanchett’s performance which is already being talked of in Oscar terms. Reviving the ‘anticipointment index’, I’ll give it 4 - less impressive than anticipated.

Allen's next film is underway, set in the South of France and with a cast including Colin Firth.  Entre deux guerres, peut-être?