Café Society (Woody Allen, 2016)

[Foam]

The plot and themes and beats in this film are so familiar that it almost approaches nothingness. But the superficial pleasures roll in consistently enough that I still found it very enjoyable. This continues the trend of the 2010s being Woody's most beautifully and thoughtfully photographed decade since the 1980s, though it's no Magic in the Moonlight. Eisenberg again gives one of my favorite Allen impressions and Kristen Stewart brings a lot of credibility to a practically nonexistent character.

I think Blake Lively was the show-stealer, however, for the same reasons Richard Brody offers: "Even more aptly cast, and offering a more detailed and composed performance, is Blake Lively, as Veronica, the elegant divorcée and City Hall official whom Bobby meets in New York. Lively captures, as do few actors today, the iridescent veneers of social behavior from a more formal era, a time when public behavior and private emotion were even more sharply cloistered."

[domino harvey]

I agree with the consensus: this is solid three star Woody Allen, with a little too much borrowed from Radio Days, but a lot of great component parts, most of which have nothing to do with the Hollywood (and later NYC) in the late 30s setting. This is certainly the most Jewish-centric Allen film in a long time, and I liked how Allen kept returning to that fount as the film wore on, while barely exploiting the Jewish angles you'd expect to see in a film about studio-era Hollywood. Eisenberg is sensational in the film's first half (but given far less to do in the second), and I thought Allen did a commendable job of writing him a role that felt authentically youthful in its neurotic tics and pushy neediness. Eisenberg's argument with the prostitute is the funniest Allen scene in a long, long time. I'm not sold on the huge shifts of the film's second half, though I liked a lot of the elements Allen employs in these sections. There is a nice melancholy interplay to Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart's interactions, but Blake Lively is depicted a little too pristinely to ever believe Eisenberg's wandering heart or for there to ever be any real threat of Eisenberg leaving his wife. A fine ending, but I'm not sure it earned the beats it searches for.