Working alongside his best romantic interest and spar, Diane Keaton, and calling upon the talents of Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston, Woody Allen pulls together a film that is a consistantly hilarious comedy and a genuinely engrossing mystery.
The story begins with a chance elevator meeting with the couple down the hall. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, the neighbor’s wife is dead and Keaton is convinced the husband is somehow involved. A series of madcap adventures follows, embroiling Allen, Keaton, and their friends and coworkers, in a dizzying tale of lies and manipulation.
Allen’s flippant storytelling style allows him to pull back now and again and let one of his characters rehash what’s gone on so far, just in case the audience hasn’t quite kept up to speed. The dialogue and performances follow this relaxed attitude, generally coming off as improvisations and ad lib, even though we can assume the bulk of the one liners were prepared beforehand and the narrative was carefully constructed. Add in Allen’s restless camera technique, which takes in faces, objects, and settings with equal attention, and you have a film that at first feels like it has no true sense of direction or story, but slowly and inextricably pulls us in and convinces us that all this is really happening, that we are in the midst of a bizarre muder mystery in the strange universe that is New York.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Comcast Moviepass Feature
10 Jun 2005 11:37 PM | Submit Comment