Cannes: Day Two

An early review of Woody Allen's new film plus offerings from Hiner Saleem and Kobayashi Masahiro

May 12 2005

Another year, another questionable Woody Allen film.

The second day of Cannes opened with a packed press screening of the director's latest movie, 'Match Point', filmed in London last summer with Scarlett Johansson and a host of British actors including Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Emily Mortimer (with cameos from the likes of James Nesbitt, Ewen Bremner and Paul Kaye).

So is it any good? Sadly, no.

Allen takes us on a ride that is best described as a third-rate update of 'The Talented Mr Ripley' transposed onto the monied beau monde of modern London and the Home Counties.

Rhys-Meyers is Chris, an Irishman with an unexceptional background who has pulled himself up by the boot-straps to become a professional tennis player-turned-coach in London.

He wins a job at an exclusive tennis club (prompting scenes filmed at the Hurlingham Club in Parson's Green), where he meets and befriends Tom (Matthew Goode).

The friendship brings him into contact with Tom's sweet and timid sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), whom he marries, and Tom's gutsy fiancee, Nola (Scarlett Johansson), with whom he embarks on an affair.

It's hard not to see this world as a romantic creation from the other side of the Atlantic with few roots in reality.

It's all very contrived, with sub-Wildean, epigram-laden dialogue and a loose grasp of the finer details of British mores and language.

London looks like a 3D realisation of Film London's latest policy initiative – all Tate Modern, Big Ben, Gherkin, Saatchi Gallery, Sloane Square, yawn – and is a world of opera, ponies and trips to the countryside at the weekend.

It's not all bad. Johansson is alluring as the Other Woman and works her lips as ever.

Penelope Wilton does a good turn as a posh, domineering mother, and thankfully the film picks up some pace towards the end (which is, all the same, deeply flawed).

Allen will make another film in London this summer, again with Johansson. Perhaps - and hopefully - 'Match Point' is a dress rehearsal for better things to come.

What else has screened so far? Last night saw Hiner Saleem's 'Kilometre Zero'.

Saleem is a Kurdish Iraqi and his film largely takes place in Kurdish Iraq during the particularly oppressive year of 1988.

It's a worthy, only mildly interesting affair – at best poetic and beautiful, at worst simply dull.

Another film with allusions to Iraq was Kobayashi Masahiro's 'Bashing', which tells of a young Japanese woman who is ostracised by her friends and family after surviving a kidnapping in the country.

An interesting conceit, this largely handheld, intimate affair is well-crafted but ultimately quite uninteresting.

Tonight, Gus Van Sant's 'Last Days' will screen to the press.

His last film, 'Elephant', took the Palme d'Or in 2003, and his take on the final days of rock star Kurt Cobain is one the most strongly anticipated films of the festival. Come to the site tomorrow for a review.

Any parties yet? Last night saw Time Out getting down with flamenco dancers at a party for sales company Wild Bunch, but the best is yet to come.

Friday night will see a party hosted by Dazed & Confused magazine for the Van Sant film and the traditional MTV bash happens on Saturday.

Salut!

And for further Cannes stories, click here

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