Review

Review Date: 27-March-05
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Melinda and Melinda (2005)

Woody Allen's latest film starts out with a promising concept: a bunch of people are sitting around discussing the meaning of life when two of them decide it would be instructive to tell the same story from different perspectives. The viewpoints are identified as drama and comedy, and the narrative involves a messed-up woman who finds herself at a crossroads. Now, the philosophical notion that life is either funny or tragic depending on how you look at it strikes me as obnoxiously simplistic,* but the artistic challenge of relating the same episodes with different styles conveying different emotions is intriguing. It's unfortunate, therefore, that Melinda and Melinda is a tease; after setting up this clever exercise, Allen doesn't follow through.

The main failure of Melinda and Melinda is that the two halves of the movie (presented together, the camera jumping back and forth between them) aren't similar enough to yield any enlightening or impressive comparisons. They share a leading lady (Radha Mitchell) and the basic elements that bind the story together, but the other characters and events vary according to the slant of each version. In the dramatic rendering, Melinda is a sexy train wreck who appears at the Manhattan loft of an old friend (Chloë Sevigny) needing a place to stay and put her life together after a series of personal catastrophes. Her visit coincides with the crumbling of the friend's marriage to a struggling actor (Jonny Lee Miller) and eventually ends after a love affair with a smooth-talking musician (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who acts modest but takes what he wants. In the comedic telling, Melinda is the ditzy but desirable girl-next-door to Will Ferrell's character, a dorky actor unhappily married to a movie director (Amanda Peet) who is principally devoted to success and projecting the right image.

Although Mitchell is solid in a pair of diverse roles, neither tale engages, amuses, or feels like a true reinterpretation of the other, leaving one to wonder if Allen found his own challenge too great. If Melinda and Melinda illustrates any thing, it's that a film falls flat when it tries to fit into a single genre, like melodrama or romantic comedy. When Melinda's story is told seriously, the players seem overly cruel and self-obsessed; when told humorously, overly clueless and unreal. Perhaps this is Allen's point: that life isn't just funny or tragic, but a little of both. That's fine for a bunch of people sitting around discussing the meaning of life. But after promising to show that human experience is in the eye of the beholder, Melinda and Melinda merely reveals how similar tales can be told dully, and it ends up a double disappointment.

*I remember the exact moment when I learned this: standing in the middle school gym during square dance class, left with no partner save a tubby loser in a white T-shirt made transparent with sweat, and having a teacher tell me sententiously that "life is what you make it."

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.