Stranger than fiction: Woody’s best London film?

A new Woody Allen film inevitably draws comparisons with his best movies and his latest, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, is no exception.

Predictably the film divided the critics when it was premiered at Cannes - with the US critics harsher on the legendary director than their European counterparts.
 
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, released in UK cinemas on Friday, follows the fortunes of London matriarch Helena (Gemma Jones) and her family as they search for love, happiness and success.

Helena's husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) leaves her for a brassy blonde escort named Charmaine (Lucy Punch). Meanwhile their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) is also having marriage troubles as her American husband Roy (Josh Brolin) ditches her for beautiful neighbour Dia (Freida Pinto).

Sally, meanwhile, has a crush on her rich and sexy boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas).
 
All of them are looking for greener pastures. Yet the search for happiness is inevitably doomed because the cost of wanting what they desire is too high.
 
Tall Dark Stranger may not be Annie Hall but it is nonetheless an elegant and witty comedy and is arguably the best of his four London-set films.  
 
While few of the characters are likeable, one of the undeniable stars of the film is the capital city. Legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond makes London look simultaneously natural and romantic.
   
The film is also 'vintage' Allen, containing as it does all the director's favourite tropes: from the de rigeur May to December romance to the belief that life is brutish and all too short. The human condition is completely random - everything from career success to who we end up with is down to luck and circumstance.
 
But it also includes a new theme - lost children. Alfie and Helena lost a son many years ago, while their daughter Sally fears she will never have the baby she desperately wants. After his divorce from Mia Farrow, Allen lost his biological son and two adopted children in the ensuing custody battle.

As the Observer's Carole Cadwalladr noted recently, Tall Dark Stranger is the first film to mine this aspect of his life.
 
As Helena seeks solace in a clairvoyant's prediction that she will meet a tall dark stranger, Roy's observation that there is a "tall dark stranger we all eventually meet" - in the shape of the Grim Reaper - puts a darker spin on the film. Fate and fortune may play their part but death, ultimately, dominates life.
 
Allen, 74, has said that he could not have made this film when he was younger as the storyline required "years of disillusionment". As for death, his philosophical position remains unaltered. "My relationship with death remains the same," he quipped at Cannes last year. "I'm strongly against it."
 
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING: Jason Solomons, the Observer: "Even Allen's most dedicated fans have had their faith in the 74-year-old New Yorker's powers sorely tested by some of his late-period output, but the new ensemble comedy... is his most assured and sprightly work for many years."

Kate Muir, the Times: "Allen has assembled a cast of incredible ability, but the result is hampered by his script. It feels like a cuts job from previous films, wrapped round some good gags and gorgeous women: a Peeping Tom rom-com for intellectuals." (3/5 stars)
 
Betsy Sharkey, the Los Angeles Times: "This kinder, gentler Allen is still clever, still amusing, and the film itself is a confection tempting enough to consider a taste. Yet there is that empty-calorie letdown after it's over. Maybe it's time to book another trip to Spain."
 
AO Scott, the New York Times: "The metaphysical pessimism that constitutes Mr Allen's annual greeting-card message to the human race - just in case we needed reminding that our existence is meaningless - is served up in Tall Dark Stranger with a wry shrug and an amusing flurry of coincidences, reversals and semi-surprises." ·