Cafe Society swings with coastal tension
Latest Woody Allen flick plays the Film House series
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW
Woody Allen’s movies have a remarkable stylistic and thematic consistency, despite covering vastly different topics and narrative structures.
fits into this familiar mold, from the opening credits in a familiar white font on black background crediting the actors while ’30s-era swing music plays in the background. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carrell, this film covers the long-established tension in Allen’s work between the authenticity of the east and superficiality of the West Coast of the U.S.
We are welcomed into a cinematic world where Hollywood and New York are pitted against one another in a competition for the most compelling place in the world.
Emerging from an early 1930s New York is the slightly nebbish young Bobby Dorfman
A closer look
(Eisenberg), who is sent by his family to Hollywood to work with his uncle Phil Stern (Carrell), a suitably grandiose Hollywood agent.
Although Bobby’s initial efforts to meet with his uncle are rebuffed, he does eventually get invited into Phil’s world as an errand boy. That’s where he meets Veronica or The FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre and Niagara Artists Centre have teamed up to present a program of films in downtown St. Catharines. Weekly reviews to run in this newspaper will highlight upcoming movies being screened at the Film House, located in the lower level of the PAC, written by a rotating roster of Niagara-area cinephiles. • As an added bonus for Woody Allen fans, the Niagara Falls History Museum will run a fall 2016 film series titled Woody Allen in the 1980s, featuring classics such as Stardust Memories, Zelig, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanours. For more information contact the museum at 905-358-5082. Vonnie (Stewart), Phil’s secretary, who is assigned the task of taking his nephew around the town to experience the sights.
Allen has a clear love of Los Angeles, and we are presented with brilliant images from classic movie theatres, Beverly Hills mansions of the stars and other Hollywood sights.
As Bobby gets further involved in his uncle’s life, he gains access to the glitzy parties and clubs of Hollywood fame.
Phil’s character is extraordinarily adept at dropping names, managing lunch meetings and glad-handing Hollywood’s stars and agents. Carrell’s handling of the middle-aged Hollywood agent feels natural as we hear about deals, drama and stories involving Errol Flynn, Hedy Lamarr, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and countless others, but in such a fashion that we trust the intimacy and closeness the film presents of this age of the colossal studios.
And so we are drawn into Allen’s work as it becomes a filmmaker’s meditation on a great age of film.
Allenuseslighttoexcellenteffectin portraying his vision of Hollywood. Characters, scenes and objects are captured in a golden aura that is beautiful to experience, and it further enlivens the connection Allen is making between his representation of the golden age of cinema and the real thing.
Eisenberg and Stewart have potent chemistry on the screen. He is a cipher for Allen (as his leading
Tickets, times
part of the Film House series at FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines, will be shown today at 9:30 p.m., Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 9:30 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m., Oct. 6 at 7 p.m., Oct. 7 at 9:30 p.m. and Oct. 8 at 4 and 9:30 p.m. For tickets and more information, visit FirstOntarioPAC.ca. men always are), but there is less neurosis and self-doubt. Eisenberg presents Bobby as a competent young man making a way for himself in the golden land of Hollywood.
Stewart is alluring and demure while also remarkably direct and powerful, as well as self-composed and skeptical about Hollywood. Her face holds a mysterious quality that compels further investigation. A love triangle develops that offers Allen the grist to push east and west into dialogue.
The film moves east because New York City is where everything happens for Allen. Amid a tale of unrequited love, there are intrigues, gangsters, jazz clubs, restaurants, marriages, family spats and questions of morality, religion and politics. And Allen’s New York City nearly always occurs after dark.
The film becomes slightly grittier both in mood and lighting as Allen uses his knowledge and love of New York to tell a story that has a complex and satisfying denouement.
If you enjoy Woody Allen’s movies, don’t miss out on this one. And if you’ve moved away from his films, let this be the one that brings you back.