This is the first line of dialogue in Woody Allen's "Match Point," but it echoes throughout the film all the way until the credits roll. If anyone in this movie sees deeply into life it is Allen himself, whose latest work is one of the year's most perceptive meditations on human nature. It is a film of sinister implications made all the more chilling by the fact that its director is one of the great comedians of the cinema; when the characters talk of life as tragic and meaningless, I was doubly shaken by the suspicion that Allen himself did not necessarily disagree.
This is not to say that the film's glacial cynicism is a fault. Indeed, the restrained eloquence with which Allen tells his story is more compelling than any "feel-good" movie this year. The first act sounds dangerously similar to yet another Meet-Cute romantic comedy: An Irish ex-tennis pro named Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) moves to London and finds himself in a relationship with Chloe (Emily Mortimer), the daughter of a wealthy British businessman. But Chris' interests in Chloe are anything but cute: A working-class social climber, he takes one look at the status and glamour of Chloe's upper-crust life and instantly begins to install himself into her family.
Enter Nola (Scarlett Johansson), a sexy American actress who Chris meets at a party and falls hopelessly in lust with. The only problem is, she's engaged to Chloe's brother Tom.
Variations of this plot have been the set-up for any number of crackling romantic tales, but
"Match Point" aspires to be more than just another bodice-ripper. There is a subtle class commentary laced within the subtext of the film: Chris marries Chloe to escape the drudgery of his blue-collar lifestyle, then finds himself compelled to take up an affair with Nola to escape the boredom of his newly-elevated status. The sex scenes between Rhys-Meyers and Johansson are surprisingly steamy for an Allen film, but the director cleverly intercuts them with deliberately stuffy displays of Chris interacting with his utterly dull in-laws, making it apparent why a man like Chris, who suddenly finds himself suffocating in upper-class British society, would want to spend his afternoons dallying with a smoldering temptress like Nola.
When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005, the international film community lauded "Match Point" as the long-awaited return to form for its erstwhile director, whose recent string of commercial and artistic flops have confounded critics and fans alike. But "Match Point" is not so much a return to form as a reinvention of it. With his latest film, Allen eschews the light breezy style that has been the bread and butter of his career and tries his hand instead at an erotic thriller. The change, it turns out, is an incredibly successful one. "Match Point" has a mesmerizing effect that I found rather fascinating; I watched, with a growing sense of dread, as the various strands of the plot slithered together into a conclusion that was as terrifying as it was inevitable.
It hasn't quite gotten the attention it deserves, but Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's performance as Chris is something of a miracle. The young actor is asked to play a man who is at once disarmingly charismatic and morally bankrupt, and he finds that balance with the ease of a seasoned tight-rope walker. The film pulses with the chemistry between him and Emily Mortimer, whose doe-eyed naivet is all the more heartbreaking when cast against Rhys-Meyers' steely grimace. But the film's greatest coup is that Chris isn't really evil, or at least not innately so. His final act of violence grows not out of malice but a desperate desire to regain control of his fractured life.
I mentioned the cynicism of the film. Behind the machinations of the plot, behind the social commentary, there is a terrifying undertone in "Match Point" that speaks of the volatility of life, that our fates are far less under our control than we would like to think. In a way, suggests Allen, we all have a little Chris Wilton in us; it only takes the right collaboration of circumstances to push us past the line of morality in defense of what we hold dear.
A scene towards the end of the film, when Chris looks his inner demons in the eye and is destroyed by what he sees there, rings truer than any moment in the movies this year. It may not be the Woody Allen we're used to, but there's no denying the brilliance of "Match Point": it's a movie that you will love even as it chills you to the bone.
