Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg in “Café Society”
For some years now, Woody Allen hasn’t quite been hitting the stylish, sardonic mark with his new “boutique comedy” films, not on the level of past deadpan jewels like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Interiors” and “Hannah and Her Sisters.”
Happily, his latest “whimsical yet wise” offering, “Café Society,” brings the good times back, making Allen fans as happy as puppies at playtime.
What makes the film work and brings back the filmmaker’s magic touch is the fact that the story is set in both Hollywood and New York many decades ago, when the world was relatively young and yearning.
The fact that various sorts of cynical and even violent events take place in the context and contrast of all that genteel grace and gloss makes the movie unexpectedly piquant and pithy.
We’re entertained and enveloped by its cocoon of glamour and romance, but we eventually realize that it’s really about people who love and exploit one another.
It’s a cautionary reminder that the witch in wonderland isn’t the only predator and party pooper to watch out for!
Jesse Eisenberg plays the film’s clueless protagonist. His older brothers and other relatives are criminals and users, but he’s as pure (and stupid) as the driven snow. So, he gets victimized from the get-go, when he decides to leave New York for exciting Hollywood, where his uncle (Steve Carell) is a well-connected wheeler-dealer.
He eventually gets to work at menial jobs for his uncle—and promptly falls in love with his secretary (Kristen Stewart). But, his feelings can’t be reciprocated, because she has a (married) boyfriend, who keeps promising to leave his wife so he can marry her.
Eventually, she has to make a choice, so he’s crushed and limps back to New York with his tail wilting between his legs.
After licking his welts and wounds, he picks up the pieces and thrives, and comes up in the world in his shady older brother’s fancy restaurant.
Eventually, however, the painful past comes to revisit, with both protagonists and antagonists now older and different from what they were before.
So, will the decisions they make now be less exploitative and thus better than the initial choice they made? Do lovers learn from the unlovely past, or are some of them doomed to keep fumbling and bungling their life choices, thus making themselves and their willing or unwilling victims miserable?
The fact that all this sad sardonic storytelling is being done with so much wit, gloss and “humor” makes “Café Society” an acquired taste for some, especially viewers who prefer their screen romances clear-cut and uncomplicated.
But, Woody Allen’s movies don’t go that smooth and easy-breezy route, so inveterate romantics and cockeyed optimists should be prepared to be disappointed—and disillusioned.
But, guess what? The disillusionment is part of the movie’s reason for being made and seen, because Allen wants his audience to really learn “tough love” lessons from their actual or “cinematically shared” experience. Message received loud and crystal-clear.