The Score May Be Love, But Allen Is Winning Again

At 70, Woody Allen is finally growing up.

In his new film Match Point , Allen has successfully made a movie that'’s more about the complex strata of human emotions than it is about double entendre of his first name. Given that Allen, Hollywood's most successful Freudian auteur, has made a career out of exploiting sexual indiscretions for the sake of a few laughs, it's refreshing to see him foray into Freud's other binary - violence. Not that Match Point isn't a cascade of frothy hormones and swapped bodily fluids, it is. Like most of Allen's films, sexual impertinence plays an important role, but Match Point is ultimately a picture of violent provocations more than a movie about trousers around ankles.

The premise of Match Point is simple enough. After stock Allen moves like black and white credits and music that sounds as though it's being played on Thomas Edison's original phonograph, we are introduced to Chris Wilton (the androgynous and Irish Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Bend It Like Beckham). Chris, a former tennis pro, has left the rigors of the touring circuit to give lessons to London's upper crust.

"If we keep this up we'll never help Little Red Hen harvest all this wheat."

Still young and aimless, Chris despises giving tennis lessons and has aims of making a "contribution" to the world; training dilettantes with money to burn is not his life'’s ambition. Fortunately for the desperate Chris, a racketeer on numerous levels, he has a grifter'’s eye and stunning good looks. United by a passion for opera, he quickly befriends the dapper Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), becomes embroiled with Tom's sister Chloe (the quintessentially Brittish-looking Emily Mortimer, Lovely and Amazing) and accepts a job working under Tom's father Alec (a subdued and goateed Brian Cox, Red Eye). Chris has seemingly been handed a one-way ticket to Nuclear-family-and-untold-riches-ville.

But (like most of Allen's films) sex muddies the waters. With total disregard for his opulent lifestyle and doting wife, Chris cannot refrain from soliciting Tom's fast fiancee, Nola (Scarlett Johansson, The Island). Nola, over-sexed, neurotic and detached from sobriety, is as close as Match Point comes to presenting the audience with a typical Woody Allen persona.

Despite his recent marriage to Chloe and her desire to become pregnant, Chris persists in pursuing Nola. They eventually succumb to their wants, shuck their clothes and adulterate in an open pasture on the Hewett family estate. Nola later rebukes the encounter because Chris, after all, is married to Chloe and she's engaged to Tom, but Nola's barb cannot be so easily withdrawn from Chris' cheek. He carelessly continues his affair right under Chloe's nose, a woman who wants normalcy to a fault, and even when Chris takes phone calls from Nola at the dinner table or says he's too tired to have sex Chloe remains oblivious to his infidelities.

"Really? I always thought satin was related to ermine."

Allen has never faltered in his mastery of dialogue, and Match Point is no exception to this rule. He's has done a marvelous job of capturing how discussion can degenerate into overlapping monologues where several characters speak simultaneously without truly listening to what others are saying. And more than any other movie before, Allen has written about the realistic failings of domesticity as opposed to the burlesque histrionics of celebrity from which his characters usually suffer. Allen adeptly depicts the infliction of pain without hamming it up and leaves the viewers with very serious questions about sacrifice and self-preservation.

In past endeavors, Allen portrayed man as little more than savage Id-driven individual thrust into a society full of temptations. With Match Point, he shows how, given enough time, the savage will reestablish his hierarchy of needs. Chris, as the embodiment of Allen's evolved figure, goes so far as to deregulate the power of sex and choose security over tawdry temptations. However, Chris is hardly a civilized character, for freeing himself from the tether of sexuality he only strengthens the grip violence has over him.

Two thousand six will mark the fortieth anniversary of Allen'’s first film What's Up Tiger Lilly? and he is just now growing out of the genital stage of his career. His symbolism is maturing, his gimmicky reliance on pathology is waning, and though he's always been philosophical (especially in his written work) he's now capturing the paradoxes of the human condition on screen.

Many critics berated Melinda and Melinda for not understanding the notion of tragedy. Match Point redeems Allen on this point, proving that he understands tragedy only too well. Though none of his characters are tragic figures themselves, the movie as a whole speaks to the injustice of luck and how the indiscriminate nature of good fortune is often wasted on those who deserve it the least.

"Oh, drat, I think I left the infidelity on again."