A familiar formula
Woody Allen hits many of his same notes in ‘Cafe Society’
When you’ve directed nearly four dozen films in the course of half a century, it might be hard to avoid repeating yourself — especially if you are a legend with carte blanche to make whatever you want and you like making a certain kind of movie.
Such is the case with “Cafe Society,” the latest addition to the Woody Allen oeuvre of talky films featuring a young Woody-like character as protagonist, a May-September romance, period costumes, a jazzy soundtrack and some punchline observations about Jewishness and the vast cultural gulf between New York and Los Angeles.
You also get a Hollywood-based backstory, with Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg, inhabiting the writer/director’s accent, tics, anxieties, etc.) leaving New York to work for his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a high-powered, married movie agent in the 1930s. Both men are in love with Phil’s assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), who is about the same age as one but merely half that of the other.
A California love triangle ensues amid an abundance of Rodgers and Hart songs and numerous outfits in which both men and women dress only in every tint of the beige/tan/khaki/ecru palette that the wardrobe department could muster. Colors must have been too expensive for people to afford wearing during the Depression, even in Hollywood. (That’s assuming the Depression did actually occur during the ’30s — the film casually ignores any mention of it while showing us swanky parties.)
Playing the earnest, naive, lovesick errand boy for his uncle, Bobby is supposed to win both us and Vonnie over. He does manage it to a certain measure of success, at least with Vonnie, although she sees him as having “a deer in the headlights quality.”
In any case, he eventually figures out LA is the wrong place for him, and the love triangle has something to do with his heading back to New York alone. That’s where a whole other movie takes place, one that’s not quite as credible as a viewer might like.
No. 1, while Bobby’s from a traditional, working-class Jewish family, his doting older brother Ben (Corey Stoll) is a homicidal gangster. No. 2, when Bobby begins running his brother’s lively nightclub, he loses any trace of nebbishness and becomes one of Manhattan’s smoothest operators.
And No. 3, when Phil and Vonnie make a surprise visit to the club that reignites old feelings, they do it as though totally clueless that Bobby might harbor difficult memories of their three-way history. On the surface, he has moved on, but not necessarily — the woman he has married (Blake Lively) is also named Veronica/Vonnie.
The characters throughout ruminate about the potent quality of romance: “When it’s right, you just know it.” “Age means nothing if you’re in love.” “In matters of the heart people do foolish things.” If you’re thinking the latter sounds an awful lot like Woody Allen’s famous defense of his taking up with 35-years-younger Soon-Yi Previn (“The heart wants what it wants”), well, you’re not the only one.
It adds up to another middling Allen film typical of the 21st century, which is enough to satisfy many fans. Others who have been with the filmmaker since “What’s Up, Tiger Lily” may feel the magic is gone after 50 years, although it’s hard to call it quits when there are such brilliant memories.