Two stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content, occasional violence and a fleeting drug reference
By Derrick Bang
Once or twice each year, I come
across a film whose mere existence is baffling.
They’re not bad, at least not
overtly; they’re simply bewildering. We endure them for somewhere between 90
and 120 minutes, and then the lights come up, and we frown at each other with
the same unspoken question: Is that it? Seriously?
And why, precisely? What was the point?
Woody Allen’s newest is just such
a film.
The package is attractively
wrapped: Production designer Santo Loquasto transports us back to 1930s New
York and Hollywood with an opulent level of verisimilitude. The actors are
luxuriously garbed by costume designer Suzy Benzinger, every member of the
large ensemble cast well selected for each part.
Allen supplies narration
throughout the film, often with the same passionate, poetic devotion that he
displayed for the Big Apple in 1979’s Manhattan.
The various characters seem reasonably interesting, the story’s unusual
romantic triangle an intriguing hook on which to hang what we expect will be an
homage to Golden Age cinematic classics.
Doesn’t work out that way.
Café Society is a textbook case of a movie
being all dressed up, with nowhere to go. I’ve no idea what Allen intended us
to gather from his bizarrely random script, unless it’s the oft-stated cliché
that people are remarkably adept at screwing up their own lives. But even that
doesn’t seem quite right, because several of these characters do get their heart’s desire.
With an oeuvre as lengthy and varied as Allen’s, we tend to categorize each
new film on the basis of its many predecessors; this one feels like a clumsy
blend of Crime and Misdemeanors and Radio Days, if the latter’s young
protagonist were half a generation older. That’s a rather unholy mash-up, to
say the least, and Allen doesn’t do anything remotely interesting with it.
Café Society also is burdened with far too
many sidebar characters, many of whom don’t get the attention they deserve.
Their various side issues don’t integrate well with the core narrative, leaving
us to wonder why they were included in the first place.
The storyline, more or less:
Bronx-born Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg),
not satisfied with joining his father’s jewelry business, decamps for the much
more exciting life he imagines awaits on the opposite coast, in Hollywood.
Bobby has an entry of sorts: his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a high-powered
agent who drops famous names, like adjectives, into every spoken sentence.
At first blush, Phil seems a
superficial, puffed-up phony who merely talks a great show, but no; turns out
he really does know and represent
everybody from Errol Flynn to Judy Garland. Even so, he’s too self-obsessed to
waste much time with a nephew, and so hires Bobby as a glorified gopher and
assigns his secretary/assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), to look after the
kid.
Vonnie embraces that task
willingly, and perhaps with too much enthusiasm; Bobby quickly falls head over
heels in love. And who wouldn’t? Stewart makes Vonnie radiant in an unaffected,
Nebraska-born, girl-next-door manner, her enchanting smile and sparkling eyes
displaying a guileless sincerity that Bobby quickly distinguishes from all the
other egomaniacal pretenders hovering in Uncle Phil’s orbit.
Ah, but bad luck, old sport;
Vonnie is forced to admit that she already has a boyfriend. Even so, she’s
obviously charmed by Bobby’s heartfelt attention ... and what girl wouldn’t be?
Then, the Big Reveal: Vonnie
actually is Uncle Phil’s mistress, a detail she is careful not to share with
Bobby. She and Phil have been together for a year, during which he has strung
her along with repeated promises to leave his wife.
Bobby buries his disappointment
by doing his best to interact with the movers and shakers who attend Phil’s
frequent parties, striking gold with one couple: New York model agency owner
Rad (Parker Posey) and her husband Steve (Paul Schneider), a wealthy producer.
They take an interest in Bobby, and we sense that this “interest” may prove
useful.
Meanwhile, Allen periodically
shuttles us back to New York, mostly to profile Bobby’s older brother Ben
(Corey Stoll), an unapologetic gangster who has clawed his way to nightclub
ownership by bumping off everybody who stood in his way. These mob-style slayings
are played for cheap laughs ... until suddenly they aren’t, during one of
Allen’s many abrupt tonal shifts.
We also meet Bobby and Ben’s
sister Evelyn (Sari Lennick), a sensitive and intelligent woman married to the
overly intellectual, Commie-sympathizing Leonard (Stephen Kunken). Their actual
purpose in these events remains vague, until the repeated incivilities of a
loutish next-door neighbor prompt Evelyn to ask Ben if he could “do something”
about the jerk in question.
Along the way, we also spend
plenty of time with the Dorfman parents: the uncomplicated, pragmatic Marty
(Ken Stott); and the forever fussing, relentlessly bickering Rose (Jeannie
Berlin). The entire family is proudly Jewish — well, not so much with Marty — and
Rose is a nagging, controlling and smothering nudnik to the core, prone to an endless stream of Yiddish
aphorisms. Berlin’s crunched-gravel voice makes such pronouncements even
funnier than they are to begin with.
Events ... develop.
Circumstances bring everybody
back to New York, not necessarily simultaneously; we also wind up back in
Hollywood, if only briefly. As the sun finally sets on this odd little morality
play, some people are unhappily restless; others are living the dream; others
are disillusioned; others go on the way they have been, unchanged; and one, in
particular, meets a fate that is wholly out of context with the rest of the
film. Eyebrow-lifting, to say the least.
Over time, Allen has cast various
younger actors as his kvetching surrogates;
John Cusack, Jason Biggs and Owen Wilson immediately come to mind. Eisenberg is
by far the best, and most natural; his signature tics already include the
twitchy anxiety and motor-mouthed intensity that characterize Allen’s nervous,
New York intellectualism. Obviously, such traits are off-putting on their own;
Eisenberg makes them palatable by imbuing Bobby with a an earnest,
unsophisticated sweetness that makes him a genuinely endearing romantic lead.
Until he isn’t. I’m not sure what to make of Bobby’s third-act
character arc, except for the fact that one can’t swim in a new pond, without
eventually smelling like the fish contained therein.
Carell’s Uncle Phil is a more
difficult study, in the opposite direction. We initially loathe his pretentious,
insulated manner: a haughty Hollywood aristocrat obsessed with his own
legend-in-the-making. Our scorn grows even stronger when Phil’s infidelity is
revealed, particularly insofar as it affects Vonnie. But as matters progress,
Carell works hard to make us sympathize with this guy, who apparently desires
(needs?) some level of happiness removed from his shark-infested environment.
I couldn’t buy it. Carell gets
top marks for trying hard, but Phil’s self-aggrandizing bluster is too much to
forgive.
It’s even harder to swallow
Vonnie’s sudden transformation, late in these proceedings. Betrayal doesn’t
seem a strong enough term; contrived capitulation is closer to the mark.
Considering the natural chemistry that Stewart and Eisenberg share — this is
their third film together, after Adventureland
and American Ultra — Allen’s
manipulative handling of this story’s Bobby/Vonnie dynamic just feels wrong.
And what, pray tell, are we to
make of Bobby’s early encounter with a first-time Hollywood prostitute (Anna
Camp) who’s just as unprepared as he, for their financial transaction? The
entire scene is awkward, mannered, utterly unbelievable and not the slightest
bit amusing, although clearly intended for laughs.
Allen’s career has risen from the
ashes far more often than most, as recent hits Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine attest. But every incandescent revival is followed by
self-indulgent clunkers, into which category Café Society definitely falls.
Assuming it makes enough sense
even to be regarded as a clunker. The jury’s still out on that one.
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