Review

Review Date: 24-October-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

I usually balk at ensemble pieces where I don't like any of the characters, but Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is an exception. Bearing little of Allen's trademark comedy, the movie is a brutally honest illustration of how adults grab at anything that gives them hope of improving their lot. No one is immune to discombobulation: not a couple married for decades, nor a couple laying the groundwork of their lives, nor a couple on the eve of their wedding. Everyone fears something, be it death or failure or loneliness, and they are looking for quick relief.

The title refers to one character's fascination with fortune telling and thus to one way in which people try to rid themselves of confusion. When her husband leaves her after 40 years together, a woman (Gemma Jones) attempts suicide and then finds solace in hearing that her aura, the cards, and the alignment of the planets indicate fabulous changes ahead. Her daughter (Naomi Watts) humors this hobby as preferable to lethal depression, although she wishes her mother would stop dropping by her flat to share predictions for the future. The atmosphere there is tense, what with her husband (Josh Brolin) struggling to succeed as a writer, and a lack of money and children straining the marriage.

Divination only soothes the mother; the rest of the players turn to other people as a means of escape. Watts develops a crush on her suave art-dealer boss (Antonio Banderas), while her husband gazes upon the grad student next door (Freida Pinto) as his muse. Responding in typically enthusiastic fashion to being in a Woody Allen movie, the cast portrays the relationships, both dying and beginning, with precision. The one dream of love that strikes a false note involves Anthony Hopkins as Watts' father, who makes a mockery of himself by marrying a bimbo less than half his age (Lucy Punch) and going broke trying to keep her in furs (and himself in Viagra). This futile method of defying mortality is so clichéd I can't believe anyone would actually go for it, and Allen adds nothing to its texture or significance.

Still, the final impression of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is a mature resignation to what makes people tick: the cycle of hope and disillusionment that keeps them unsatisfied but dogged. Seen from a distance, the cycle appears pathetic. Yet Allen holds out the slight comfort that as long as people find things to cling to, at least they are engaging in life.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.