Shadows on the Wall | Rifkin's Festival

Rifkin’s Festival

dir-scr Woody Allen
prd Letty Aronson, Erika Aronson, Jaume Roures
with Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Louis Garrel, Elena Anaya, Sergi Lopez, Christoph Waltz, Tammy Blanchard, Douglas McGrath, Steve Guttenberg, Richard Kind, Enrique Arce, Nathalie Poza
release Sp 2.Oct.20,
US 28.Jan.22
20/Spain 1h28

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In a playful mood, Woody Allen juggles iconic scenes from movie history while telling a comical story. Brisk and snappy, it's packed with witty dialog and a range of characters who whimsically clash in a lovely Spanish setting. But whenever things begin to get interesting, the script deploys a glib punchline that prevents the film from moving forward. So it soon feels like it's on a road to nowhere.

Hypochondriac film professor Mort (Shawn) reluctantly accompanies his publicist wife Sue (Gershon) to the San Sebastian Film Festival, where she's managing hot young filmmaker Philippe (Garrel). Annoyed by Sue's over-attentiveness to the pompous Philippe, Mort walks around the city obsessing about his life. At one point he visits Doctor Joana (Anaya) to check on his perfectly healthy heart. She's a fan of classic movies, which makes him want a check-up every day. And soon he's fantasising about upending his whole life. Although he actually may be pushing Sue to do this for him.

Goofy pastiche sequences punctuate the film, as fantasies and dreams mimic black and white classics by Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman, Welles and Godard. These are often somewhat gimmicky, and they also become swamped in Allen's personal insecurities, but they're finely shot and performed with gusto. They also give fine performers like Kind (as Mort's father), Guttenberg (as his brother) and Waltz (as Death) a chance to chomp merrily on the scenery. These black and white segments contrast to the glorious sunshine of San Sebastian's seaside vistas.

Shawn has engaging presence in the usual chatty, neurotic Allen-esque role, although his voiceover is so insufferable that it's difficult to imagine spending more than 10 minutes listening to him babble. And the way Mort chases Joana is downright creepy, especially since she's 15 years younger than Mort's already 20-years-younger wife. She's also married, although her husband (Lopez) is a wildly mercurial artist. This certainly isn't balanced, as perhaps intended, by the interplay between the superb Gershon and Garrel, who are more believable as a couple.

Amid the meandering threads of a plot, a few solid themes gurgle along, including the value of curiosity and how a fear of living can limit your life experiences. But no one in this movie seems to be terribly engaged to anything around them, remaining locked in their own selfish perspective, as restrictive or as expansive as that might be. At least the tone is consistently breezy. As Death says, your life may be empty, but that doesn't mean it has to be meaningless.

themes, language 20.Jan.22

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