Match Point (2005)

Written and directed by Woody Allen

With Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton

Woody Allen left his beloved Manhattan for the first time in his film career and returned to the big screen with Match Point, a pleasantly surprising film that received an outstanding reception at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005.

The story takes place in modern-day London. Irishman Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a young ex-tennis professional, lands a job as a tennis instructor at a very exclusive tennis club, where he meets his first rich student, Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode). Discovering their mutual interest in opera, Tom invites Chris to join his family in their private box at the Royal Opera House. Tom’s sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), is immediately love-struck by the handsome stranger with the modest background. Their relationship and, later, marriage are Chris’s passport to the British upper class, entry gained with Alec and Eleanor Heweett’s (Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton) approval and support. The privileges of wealth, however, are not capable of stopping Chris’s passion for Tom’s beautiful and sexy American actress fiancée, Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson). Their secret, complicated and torrid affair will prove fatal.

“Match Point is a drama about love and passion, ambition and crime, about the dominant role of luck and fate in our lives,” Ninos Fenek-Mikelidis, the movie critic and cinema expert, said. “Allen’s script is clearly influenced by Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the case of Scott Peterson (who murdered his pregnant wife, Luci), Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley and by the Greek classical tragedy themes of luck and fate, the cosmic powers which affect human life despite good intentions, hard work or desperate efforts to avoid them.”

At first glance, in Match Point Woody Allen looks into the luck factor, affirming Murphy’s Law. However, the interesting point of the film, the matter that raises questions and dilemmas for the audience through a Hitckockian script plot, is controversial till the end: even though some of us seem to be blessed with an extraordinary amount of good luck, while others suffer misfortune after misfortune, Allen’s heroes are not oblivious of their responsibilities.

“As the film’s protagonist, Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), does not follow his heart or let opportunities slip through his fingers, and his fate lies within his control, (and) as Nola (Scarlett Johansson) is trapped in the past and her lust and is continually thinking about what went wrong, we start to wonder about ourselves, about our life choices, our real unexpressed character and our deeper, dark, secret aims,” said psychiatrist Stelios Krasanakis. “Can we negotiate our integrity in the name of fulfilling a vain vision? Can we be in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time? Can we turn something bad into good fortune? When should we give up? Where are the limits? Where is justice and God?”

All those eternal, angst-ridden questions that prey on the audience’s and Allen’s mind – about chance and responsibility, about immolators and victims, about judgment and punishment – are posed through remarkable scenes following a classic film noir narration, which unfolds from the introductory “philosophical” shot of the tennis court.

Chris and Nola’s first meeting in the ping-pong room in the Hewett country house is crucial to the story development. When Chris admires Tom’s fiancée Nola, and the camera slowly approaches her lascivious lips, the viewer can sense their future, forbidden, torrid affair, which will be realized in their very passionate sex scene in the field during the storm. How many of us could resist such an experience? How many of us haven’t ever vividly fantasized about such an encounter? But where should stop? And who sets the limit? Chance or God? Or do we determine it through our choice?

The double murder scene (excellently edited by Allen’s collaborator Alisa Lepselter, who combines medium and close-up shots to underline the innocent victim’s ignorance and reveal the decisiveness of the amateur but soulless murderer) is the unexpected black humor, Allen’s sarcastic answer which infuriates and at the same time relieves us, raising our adrenalin through the scene of the slow-motion throwing of the gold ring toward the river, the ring which may become the fatal damning evidence against the murderer. It’s the point where the audience could think that one wrong move could become fateful by a twist of fate.

Allen’s first collaboration with a British cast and crew has borne fruit: director of photography Remi Adefarasin taps the London weather to create the ideal modern, glowing, but at the same time grey and depressing lighting of the world of money, which demands the sacrifice of emotions and thoughts, a world without the slightest compunction.

The excellent photography and the plot are supported by the carefully chosen film locations in and around London. Here praise goes to production designer Jim Clay and location manager Sue Quinn, who were Woody Allen’s guides to the British capital. Several London landmarks (the Royal Opera House, the Saatchi Gallery, the Tate Modern, the Sir Norman Foster-designed “Gherkin,” the vast Englefield Estate) are the locations of many remarkable scenes, bringing out the characters’ habitual surroundings, upbringing, education and lifestyle.

The set is completed by costume designer Jill Taylor’s classic simple clothes, which match the characters and their lifestyle, a lifestyle the tragedy of which is underlined by arias (by Verdi, Donizzeti and Bizet) sung by Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, while a song from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s The Woman in White makes the audience aware of Allen’s ingenious joking with his heroes’ different backgrounds and tastes.

Once more, Allen, with the collaboration of casting directors Juliet Taylor, Gail Stevens  C.D.G. and Patricia Kerrigan DiCerto, has made a choice of actors from among the most distinguished European actors: handsome Irishman Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Chris so wonderfully that the character of the desperate, greedy, lucky fortune-seeker becomes sympathetic. Native New Yorker Scarlett Johansson (the only American actress in the cast) is terrific as the sensual, jealous, demanding and unlucky Nola Rice; she is so sensual that anyone would understand Chris for not being able to break off his passionate extra-marital affair, and understand why he cheats on his sweet but boring rich wife, Chloe Wilton, performed by fantastic Emily Mortimer (a big plus for the film, as she effectuates perfectly the director’s intention to create a tenderfoot character who has no scruple about buying and keeping the man she likes by offering him the ticket to wealth and power). Matthew Goode is the ideal person to play happy-go-lucky, fabulously rich Tom Hewett. Allen was happy, too, to have actors such as veteran Brian Cox (good -hearted Alec Hewett) and Penelope Wilton (drinker and sourpuss Eleanor Hewett), who played brilliantly and realistically the tycoon parents of Emily and Tom and support Chris, understanding their daughter’s need and love.

“Match Point is a film worth seeing, as it can be interpreted in many ways, according to what we see or we want to see, according to what we are disposed to think and reconsider about the way we see life,” said Tassos Boulmetis, the movie director whose film A Touch of Spice was Greece’s official entry in the Academy Awards of 2005. “In my opinion, Match Point is an excellent Woody Allen comeback. Don’t miss it!”