Cafe Society -- Film Review
Cafe Society
Directed
by Woody Allen
This is a feel good movie without a lot of depth. It is simple and romantic. The characters are cartoonish, without a lot
of complexity. Kristen Stewart is very
compelling as Vonnie. The character she
plays is a sweet, vapid bubblehead, but she is quite attractive. An uncle and nephew share her as a girlfriend
and the uncle ends up with her. But the
nephew gets another girl who is very similar.
He and Vonnie remain attached to some extent, although not enough to
make any meaningful difference. There is
not a lot of action. It takes place in a
romanticized past of probably the 1930s (without the depression). These are affluent, white, mostly Jewish
people in New York and Hollywood. Woody
Allen is going back to his roots, but in a rather saccharine, idealized,
sanitized portrayal. Even the gangland
style murders have a remote, dreamlike quality to them. They feel sort of abrupt and incongruous, but
they are quickly passed over, like a small item you might scan in the
newspaper. Hollywood is rejected for New
York. The gangster brother is the only
one who seems to be able to get anything done.
Everyone else in the family benefits from his criminality, but he is
repudiated in the end by getting convicted and executed in the electric
chair. The plot is rather improbable,
but it does hold your interest. The film
is not boring, but it is not very satisfying either. I don't think I would want to take a date to
this. I would rather take a date to
something with a little more challenge and a little more substance. Technically, it is well put together and well
crafted. It is a triumph of traditional
middle class values, except where the married man leaves his wife of 25 years
to marry a younger woman. But we don't
see too much of the discarded wife or the turmoil or ennui that he was
fleeing. Everything seems to be rather
civilized in this movie. I can't say too
much else about it. There is not enough
substance here to merit a lengthy discussion.