Match Point
Issue #26
directed by Woody Allen
By Rebecca Flint-Marx
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 3:14pm
In Match Point, Emily Mortimer and Scarlett Johansson play diametrically opposed women who have the misfortune of being in love with the same man. In one corner is Johansson as Nola, a struggling actress who, when she’s not busy lolling about in her lingerie, attends the occasional ill-fated audition. In the other corner is Mortimer as Chloe, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Sweet and spoiled rotten, Chloe owns an art gallery, a job that takes a distant backseat to her overwhelming ambition to be married with children.
The object of Nola and Chloe’s desire and frustration is Chris, an Irish tennis coach who, early on, wins the favor of Chloe’s brother and parents thanks to a combination of easy charm and quiet but steely ambition. Because Chris is played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, things are destined to go wrong. Possibly the only actor working today who looks like he was sprung, fully formed, from an Aubrey Beardsley illustration, Rhys-Meyers brings an air of silky depravity to every role he inhabits, a trait that is well exploited by Match Point’s sojourn down Amorality Lane.
Chris sets the jaunt in motion when he marries Chloe, an event complicated by his ongoing affair with Nola, who, when they first meet, is engaged to Chloe’s brother. With its gray London setting and soundtrack of mournful Italian opera, the film revisits Allen’s darker, more ethically probing themes: It most immediately brings to mind Crimes and Misdemeanors, with nods to Wharton and Waugh. But while it’s a relief to see Allen return to form, it’s discouraging to see him return, however indirectly, to the scene in Husbands and Wives in which Juliette Lewis charges that the women in Allen’s character’s work are given a choice between only “chronic dissatisfaction and suburban drudgery.”
Almost no one fares particularly well in Match Point, but it’s dismaying that Johansson and Mortimer’s characters are drawn in a manner that perfectly validates Lewis’ accusation. Johansson spends the film doing her best impression of a dog in heat as she pressures Chris for commitment, while the always wonderful Mortimer is reduced to playing the part of the cloying, bourgeois shrew. Critics may herald Match Point as a return to the Allen we all know and love, but where his roles for women are concerned, it would be better if he would just move forward.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more