Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Director: Woody Allen
Rated: M
LONDON has given Woody Allen a new lease of life. He obviously loves London, with more than enough sights of well known and unknown locations.
He also communicates differently from his New York stories despite similarities in characters and themes through a principally British cast, their different accents, vocabulary and voice inflections.
At times, Match Point is more British than British.
We enter the upper class Hewett family with Irish tennis coach Chris Wilton (a surprisingly effective Jonathan Rhys Meyers).
While we find them pompous, he finds them fascinating and soon throws in his lot with them – friendships, opera and the arts, business positions, marriage.
Early on we catch him reading Dostoyevski, so Allen is giving us the lead for the further plot developments.
It is Crime and Punishment and Crimes and Misdemeanours revisited, English-style.
Some of his cast have suggested that it is a British kind of Chekhov family and society.
There is an opening light reflection on luck when a tennis ball served balances on the net and could fall either way.
Allen uses this image with relish in the closing section of the film. He reflects on luck, planning and working.
In the meantime, Chris has married Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer) and continues an affair with aspiring American actress Nola (Scarlett Johansson).
Matters end badly or well, depending on who won the match point.
Allen highlights the patronising banality of the upper classes and the selfish banality of Chris, leaving the audience to provide its own moral anchor for judgments.
