IT IS SOME measure of the distribution problems currently plaguing Woody Allen that we examine the director's latest picture before a review of Whatever Works, his previous film, has appeared in these pages.
A brief glance at You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger– the title's intimations of looming death are intended – does nothing to suggest that distributors will be rediscovering their enthusiasm any time soon. This is the latest of Allen's projects to be shot in London and, like too many of its predecessors, the picture's sense of place is as uncertain as its sexual politics are queasy.
You thought Allen had done enough jokes about older men romancing young women? Think again. One of the clutter of stories in this film follows an overdressed Anthony Hopkins as, after dumping his unfortunate wife (Gemma Jones), he hooks up with one of Woody’s trademark, broadly drawn vacuum-skulled bimbos.
Elsewhere, in too-clean London, his daughter, played with flinty fragility by Naomi Watts, is drifting away from her husband (Josh Brolin), a struggling novelist, and moving towards a smooth art dealer (Antonio Banderas).
In recent years, Allen has been at his best when at his most broadly comic. One of the new film’s slighter plots, which finds Brolin plotting to pass off a deceased acquaintance’s novel as his own, has the potential for a first-class romp, but it is crowded off the screen by a series of less diverting stories, most of which seem unsure where they sit on the drama-comedy continuum.
It is still a pleasure to witness Allen’s lightness of touch – you could not mistake this for the work of any other director – but, when the comedy fails, as it too often does, it tends to reveal an unattractive streak of misogyny. None of which would matter if the jokes were a bit better.
