A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK (2019) ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Woody Allen
Timothée Chalomet, Elle Fanning, Liev Schreiber,
Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Rebecca Hall,
Cherry Jones, Kelly Rohrbach, Suki Waterhouse
This almost plays like a parody of a Woody Allen movie, the catch being that it is a Woody Allen movie, made by the man himself. Elle Fanning plays a novice reporter (remember Scarlett Johansson in "Scoop"?), in New York City to interview an arthouse filmmaker for her college newspaper upstate. Tagging along is her pal Gatsby (Timothée Chalomet), an idly wealthy kid who's drifting along on a sea of family money that he augments by winning at poker. It's a rainy day in New York and they get separated, and she ends up in encounters with three (count 'em - three) older men, while he runs into a few old friends, connects with the sister of an ex-girlfriend, and picks up a prostitute, which leads to a revealing conversation with his mother, played by Cherry Jones. So, okay, it's a movie set in New York, filled with articulate, self-important intellectuals who live in the kinds of places that in a real Manhattan would cost way more than most real people could ever afford. It's beautifully designed and shot, smartly cast and acted, and every now and then a line lands and you think, yeah, that could only be Woody Allen. The story's episodic and a bit thin, though, the outlook on romance is cynical, and Fanning's character seems a little too dull and bland for all the attention she gets from those guys. (Or maybe intellectual depth is not what they're looking for.) Johansson had more sharp edges in her Woody Allen movies, or seemed to. It made all the difference.
