Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride

Cannes: Day Two

Woody Allen has done it again! The filmmaker brought his latest film Match Point to the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday evening and I do not stand alone in saying it is one of his best films in years. That may not mean much given Allen's track record of late, but the advanced rumors that Match Point was a "masterpiece" were right on target.

The film is Allen's ninth to be selected for Cannes and, as with all his films, it is being screened out of competition. Back in 2002 the filmmaker's Hollywood Ending opened the festival. Since the French just love Woody Allen, he was also awarded a lifetime Palm d'Or for his body of work. His history with Cannes began in 1979 with Manhattan and has included such films as Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days.

Allen's films are always highly anticipated when they are screened in Cannes, yet most of the journalists who showed up this year were only cautiously optimistic that they would have anything to look forward to. I count myself among them. And as the credits rolled on Match Point, I am pretty sure I heard a collective sigh of relief. Woody Allen hasn't lost his ability to direct a good movie. Or if he had, he certainly found it again.

This time though Allen does not set his story in New York City, as is his custom. Instead, Match Point makes the most of London as a location and features some talented English actors and actresses. At the center of its plot is Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a tennis pro who comes from modest means. In his ambition to better his life he strikes up a romance with Chloe Hewitt (Emily Mortimer), the daughter of a wealthy businessman (Brian Cox). At the same time he falls for aspiring actress Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), who just happens to be engaged to Chloe's brother Tom. Becoming comfortable in his new life of wealth and luxury, Chris decides to marry Chloe and work for her father. Shortly afterwards, Chris learns that Nola and Tom have broken off their engagement, which enables him to start up an affair with her.

From there the rest of the story, which has more twists and turns than the Pacific Coast Highway, is best left unwritten.

Just know that this is not a typical Allen film, in fact, if you didn't know he directed it, you might not peg him as the filmmaker behind it. There is hardly a laugh to be found and the suspense Allen is able to elicit had everyone on the edge of their seat.

If you're lucky you just might get to see Match Point after it finds an American distributor. Presently it doesn't have one. An acquisitions executive I spoke with - who begged me not to use his name - said that Fox Searchlight had been "burned" by Allen too many times in the past, as had DreamWorks. (So you can strike those two studios off the list of places the exec I was speaking to worked for.)

Lack of an American distributor doesn't make Allen upset or nervous. In fact he chose to make his film without American money on purpose. "I did the film in England because in the United States I've been making films for decades and it's become more and more prevalent in the United States for the studios and the people that give financing to want to participate in the project," the director complained. "They don't want to be thought of just as a bank. They have something to say about the casting, they'd like to read the script, they'd like to occasionally come to dailies and I have never worked that way in my life and couldn't work that way. I want the money in a brown paper bag and I'll give them the film a few months later and that's it!"

Scarlett Johansson, who joined Allen in speaking with the press after an early morning screening, however she barely opened her mouth. When asked if her character was a vixen, she shrugged and replied, "I don't know necessarily that she's a femme fatale. I think she's a sexy girl, but she seems to be surviving any way she can. I think she's sensual and, as any woman will, when you see something you want you go after it or not." Then as if to apologize, she added, "It's kind of always there that you have these feminine wiles which just don't go away."

That was clearly evident when Johansson showed up with Allen, Mortimer and Rhys-Meyers for the Monte de Marche on Thursday evening. She looked absolutely stunning.

Gilles Jacob, the director of the festival, met Allen at the top of the red carpet. He also escorted him into the press conference earlier in the day. For 45 minutes Allen kept more than 200 journalists entertained with witty banter. The London journalists all wanted to know why Allen not only shot Match Point in London, but why he is shooting his next film in there as well. The answer the filmmaker gave is indicative of his mood during the conference.

"To an American ear an English voice is very wonderful.," he joked. "I can't tell the difference between an English voice, an Irish voice, an Australian voice. . . I have no ear that way."

Seems odd that he'd find any voice "wonderful." Allen had to have almost every question repeated to him by the moderator and Mortimer who were sitting next to him.

After Allen finished with the press, most of the journalists headed over to a presentation DreamWorks was giving to introduce their latest animated film, a feature length version of the Academy Award winning shorts, Wallace & Gromit. It was an odd event in which Jeffrey Katzenberg asked the founders of Aardman, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, as well as filmmaker Nick Park, to recount the entire history of their animation studio starting in the early 1980s.

Ironically, in a room full of journalists, they turned out the lights throughout the course of the presentation. The footage of the new film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, looked phenomenal. It's due out in the fall and is presently still in production.

As for why the claymation characters have remained so popular with audiences, Park explained, "It is about appealing to the child within. I tried to remember what I loved as a kid and tried to use all the best bits that I loved as a kid, but it's also what will appeal to me now as an adult."

DreamWorks then invited everyone over to the American Pavilion, which is located right outside the Palais on the beach, to look at some of the incredibly detailed miniature sets used in the film. Of course, most of the journalists were there because they served lunch. There may not be a free lunch in Hollywood, but there certainly is in Cannes!

Day One

May 12, 2005
- by J. Sperling Reich