From Mar 25th, Lexi Film Club Weds, Mar 30th
In a flurry of coincidences and reversals, the late-life divorce of Alfie and Helena affects all around them. Alfie rebounds into marriage with a high maintenance ex-prostitute while bereft Helena finds great comfort in spiritualism and clairvoyance. Folly and dodgy marriages aren’t confined to the older generation, though; the couple’s daughter toys with infidelity while her husband, a blocked writer, appropriates the unpublished novel of a dead friend. Then he discovers that reports of his friend’s death were a trifle premature…
This is Woody Allen’s fourth film set in London and by all accounts he is finally getting it right. Allen’s sophisticated comedies of manners rely on an intimate understanding of people and place, something which has been lacking up until now. This fluid farce has a mouth-watering ensemble cast - Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins, with Naomi Watts, Frieda Pinto and the much-praised Gemma Jones - and it stylishly wraps up in one neat little package ideas about romantic fate, and yearnings for Other and Better. These are not new themes for Allen, but his typically wry musings on relationships always delight!
