Movie Review: Café Society

Woody Allen makes the move to digital for Café Society, but otherwise, he’s singing the same old song – one we’re becoming increasingly uncomfortable with.

“So, what is age?” asks Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) of his uncle, manager to the stars Phil Stern (Steve Carell). “Nothing means anything if you are actually in love.”

In the context of Café Society, Bobby is justifying Phil’s dalliance with a personal assistant who’s several decades his junior.

The cosmic joke, of course, is that Bobby is accidentally encouraging Phil to keep on an affair with Bobby’s girlfriend, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). Neither man knows they’re seeing the same young woman. How droll.

The audience will surely trip up on Bobby’s jarring, Aaliyah-esque urging. Instead of laughing, viewers might have a question of their own for writer-director Woody Allen: “Are you kidding me?”

Allen’s numerous controversies regarding this subject have been well documented: There’s his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, adopted daughter of Allen’s ex, Mia Farrow; even more troubling are the allegations of childhood sexual abuse by his own adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow. (Those allegations have been flatly denied by Allen.)

Café Society, a frivolous picture about Hollywood in the 1930s, offers no revealing insight into either of those clouded relationships, nor any answers; the truth belongs solely to its participants.

However, we cannot, ever, separate the art from the artist. Including such a tone-deaf chunk of dialogue speaks volumes of Allen; he either doesn’t know, or, more likely, doesn’t care, how he’s now perceived by the public, and identified no problem with how we'd hear that questionable line.

It’s representative of his increasingly warped perspective on what people want to see – from him in particular. Woody Allen, once uniquely skilled at depicting moving, modern relationships of all shapes, grows stranger and more discomforting as a filmmaker.

As such, Café Society is a pretty unpleasant experience, only occasionally relieved by its cast. Carell – who replaced Bruce Willis, fired for reportedly forgetting his lines – is appealing as always; so much so, you barrack for him over his abrasive love-rival, Eisenberg (Allen’s aggressively-neurotic stand-in). The latter plays a perpetually-hunched New Yorker who comes to Los Angeles seeking a job at his uncle’s agency, returning to NYC with a broken heart to run a mobbed-up hot spot with his brother (Corey Stoll). A parallel is vaguely drawn between movie stars and the mafia. We are not at peak Woody.

The men pale next to their female co-stars. Kristen Stewart doesn’t quite master the period-speak of Rosalind Russell like some others in the flick, but her effortless magnetism and modern perspective is refreshing. Jeannie Berlin, as Bobby’s mum, and Anna Camp, as a first-time prostitute, offer some hearty laughs. Stoll, Blake Lively and Parker Posey are also fine in their limited roles. None in the cast can complain of a damaged reputation. Well, save for the narrator: that’d be Allen.

The costuming and set dressing is stunning, but Vittorio Storaro’s digital cinematography – a first for Allen – feels hyper-real, undoing the nostalgic effect that Allen frequently relies on for his period pieces. Midnight in Paris was legitimately beguiling and involving, and much of that had to do with Darius Khondji’s film photography (though there was some digital tweaking after the fact). Café Society, like the director behind it, is detached and remote.

Allen’s career has always been littered with clunkers; it used to be you could at least expect a good one on alternate years. Since Blue Jasmine in 2013, he’s nought for three. Magic in the Moonlight, Irrational Man and Café Society now mark a trilogy of spiritually-empty jerks falling head over heels for 20-year-olds. It's becoming harder and harder not to litigate Woody, the man, by his movies.

2.5/5

In cinemas October 20. Rated M for mature themes and violence.