In "Match Point," his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the director once again brings the bad news, delivering it with a light, sure touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment.
Now to be honest, even though we were born within a month of each other and both graduated from Ivy League schools, I don't really understand what Mr. Scott is referring to, but it seems like he enjoyed the film. All those familiar with Ernst Lubitsch's work, raise their hand! I think I've heard of Billy Wilder at least.
Anyway, the film stars Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as a former tennis pro with Scarlett Johansson as an American actress. Now, I guess it's not much of a strecth for an actress to play an actress, but since we're talking about the hottest Jewish actress of this nascent century, I am less inclined to care. A.O. Scott continues...
Mr. Rhys-Meyers has an unusual ability to keep the audience guessing, to draw us into sympathetic concord even as we're trying to figure him out. Is he a cipher or a sociopath? A careful social climber or a reckless rake? The first clue that he may be something other than a mild, well-mannered sidekick comes when Chris meets Tom's fiancée, an American actress named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), in a scene that raises the movie's temperature from a polite simmer to a full sexual boil.
----------
“Men think I may be something special,” she tells him, in one of their first flirtatious conversations.
“Well, are you?”
“No one has ever asked for their money back.”
----------
By the way, Roger Ebert also liked it, and he's the only critic who's opinion counts as far as I'm concerned.
“Match Point" has a good chance, I suspect, of being his biggest box office success since "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters."
Opening in New York and L.A., you lucky devils.
No comments:
Post a Comment