Do You Feel Lucky??

I had the unique experience of watching "Match Point" in a packed Manhattan theater last night. The hometown crowd was out in full force, and it was evident from the first preview that there was a bit of shared-brain syndrome going on. (Witness unbridaled guffaws of laughter - led, it seems, by my sister - at the preview for the new Mel Gibson picture, "Apocalypto," which seems to be (another?) epic saga in a dead language.) Everyone was rooting for Woody, waiting breathlessly for him to hit one out of the park.

And he did. "Match Point" is a compelling morality tale, made almost completely plausible by the mesmerizing performance of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. Woody did a masterful job ensuring that the audience is just as seduced by the Hewett's lavish lifestyle as Chris is, engendering empathy for the protagonist that lasts until the moment when his struggle to do the right thing and retain his favored status within in his new adopted family gives way to some seriously dark, misguided forces.

There were a few choice moments that let you know you were watching a Woody Allen movie: Chris breaking into a claustrophobic sweat in his giant office; Chloe's friend at the Tate Modern talking about their mutual acquitances who had gotten together after discovering that their neuroses complimented each other so perfectly. Otherwise, it was easy to get lost in this incredibly English world full of characters who never in a million years would have found their way into any of Woody's other films.

There was really only one clunky moment, when Chris is visited by the apparitions of Nola and her neighbor and addresses them with stilted, pseudo-philosophical jargon. The moment passes quickly, though, and the film immediately regains its center of gravity. I was tickled by what I thought of as the film's coda, the shtick between the Irish and Scottish detectives. They brought a certain comic levity to the action after a fairly long stretch of excrutiating tension and suspense.

My sister (who also loved the film) served as the fertility plausibility police, noting that Chloe should have been taking her temperature before getting out of bed rather than at the breakfast table. And when they all returned home from the hospital after baby Terrance's birth, she noted that Chloe was wearing tight jeans "and did not look sufficiently post-partum." But hey...

I don't know what has been wrong with Woody over these past ten or fifteen years. I am just glad that he has created a film of such creeping (or is it creepy?) intensity.