An exercise in wish fulfilment
Let’s assume you’re only interested in the latest Woody Allen flick if you’ve followed this career ride this far. You’re less bothered about the tawdry sexual accusations of recent years and have learned to put up with Allen writing a proxy into nearly every one of his movies (this time it’s Jesse Eisenberg, a natural when it comes to playing neurotic).
Here, his Allen character is a naive young New Yorker who leaves his suffocating family home for a shot at the big time in Hollywood. He starts working for his film producer uncle (a terrific Steve Carell) and falls in love with a beautiful woman (Kristen Stewart), until romantic complications ensue.
Cafe Society sets off as a jolly romp, but it doesn’t pretend to deliver anything particularly special in terms of a clever story, or witty dialogue (if anything, Allen has slightly lost his knack). The characters aren’t even likeable! But I guess the reason Cafe Society works is down to the Allen charm, continuing to work its dodgy old magic 50 years after his directorial debut, and four decades since he made Annie Hall (his first film to win Oscars, for writing and directing).
As usual, the plot is all talky-talk and dubious romantic entanglements – wish fulfilment, no doubt, in the mind of its aging writerdirector. For the viewer, it’s mostly an exercise in wish fulfilment if you’ve always wanted to see out your days drinking champagne from saucers bathed in jazzy tunes and golden light. In which case, Allen gives you exactly what you want.