This review was originally published in the University Observer’s Freshers’ Magazine in September 2016. It was later published online.
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Parker Posey, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll
Release Date: September 2nd
Café Society is Woody Allen’s forty-sixth film and by now his time spent in the spotlight is showing. The film is full to the brim with the tropes and archetypes of Allen’s cinema, and they are wheeled out and displayed at such momentum that it often plays like a self-defeating parody of itself. A neurotic protagonist, jazz music, a period setting, Jewish stereotypes, and an awkward romance are all on parade in this nostalgia-fest.
The film is set in the 1930s, during Hollywood’s Golden Era, and begins as Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg, doing his best Woody Allen impression), a Jewish man from the Bronx, moves to Hollywood to start afresh. It is there that he encounters his uncle, Phil (Steve Carell), an overworked but completely adept talent agent, and his secretary Veronica (Kristen Stewart). The relationship between the two men becomes strained when Veronica falls in love with both of them, dredging another trope of Allen’s cinema – that of an older man forming a relationship with a woman significantly his junior. There is also a subplot involving Bobby’s gangster brother Ben (Corey Stoll), and the film jumps back and forth between the two at the cost of consistent tone and pace.
This is yet another period piece by the veteran director and by now he can slip in and out, change and adapt, to the recent past with a relevant ease. The lavish sets and gorgeous cinematography by Vitorrio Storaro combine to idealise a period when glamour and superficiality trumped substance; muted primary colours typify the Hollywood Allen wishes to depict.
Such attractive imagery leaves you with a feeling of wanting, however; Allen spends more time dealing with a plot that is predictable and paper-thin, and less exploring the world he has created. Although names like ‘Irene Dunne,’ and ‘Errol Flynn’ are dispersed throughout the dialogue, the film does not dedicate enough time to immersing itself fully in the period it sets to mimic. The beauty of Midnight in Paris, Allen’s 2012 offering, is that, while advancing the film’s central romance we are treated, often humorously, to caricatures of 1920s Modernist writers. In Café Society, we are less tourists of history than bored patrons desperately trying to see everything before the museum closes.
In a Nutshell: Café Society is a gorgeous-looking wasted opportunity. Rent Midnight in Paris instead.
A Frantic Disposition 