Rated PG-13 for violence & suggestive material, 96 min.
Witty and smart, yet concealing a rich vein of silliness and honest sentimentality just beneath the sophisticated surface, Café Society is writer-director Woody Allen’s caustic but secretly wholehearted Valentine to the Hollywood Dream Factory of the 1930’s. New Yorker Allen has never been afraid to champion the Big Apple over all other cities—especially Los Angeles—but in recent years he’s made some of his best work outside his comfortable Manhattan environment. In fact, he’s become a bit of a globe-trotter, exploring (and falling in love with) San Francisco, Paris, Rome, and London. Allen’s still allergic to California sunshine and palm trees, and Café Society doesn’t wax rhapsodic about L.A.—that would be too much to expect. But it’s deeply infatuated with the Golden Age of Hollywood and all the glitz and glamour that dazzled many an Easterner visiting its studio back lots. Allen’s hero-surrogate is Bobby, played with wide-eyed naïve intensity by Jesse Eisenberg. Bobby’s a Bronx native who seeks fame and fortune in Hollywood, where he’s rebuffed—then embraced—by his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell), an agent who knows everybody who’s worth knowing in Tinseltown. Phil makes Bobby his protégé and soon Bobby is hobnobbing with the stars, turning away from his parents’ Jewish fatalism in favor of the blithe nonchalance and joie de vivre of his newfound friends and associates. Café Society is more of an ensemble piece than other Allen films, though, giving many actors in small roles a chance to shine. Kristen Stewart, surprisingly to many Twilight non-fans, provides one of the best performances as Phil’s Midwest-born secretary, Vonnie—who becomes the object of both Phil’s and Bobby’s romantic interest. The movie provides some pointed barbs about the superficiality of “café society” (in New York, not just L.A.), but it’s one of Allen’s gentler films: he may not like the philosophical and moral emptiness that permeates Hollywood, but he loves cinema. It’s an interesting paradox because Allen has to accept that a certain amount of phoniness is necessary to weave those amazing tapestries of dreams, producing marquee names like Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, and the entire firmament of Hollywood stars of the ‘30s. Allen’s ambivalence toward this make-believe gives Café Society greater weight, elevating it above one-note satire that Hollywood hatchet jobs generally entail. Allen is as besotted with the high life as Bobby, and the seductive allure of Hollywood is visually represented by renowned cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. He brings the Art Deco sets and dazzling colors of this dream-world to life, making Café Society one of Allen’s most gorgeous-looking films. When the action returns to New York, the otherworldly ambiance dissipates and becomes harsher, grittier, more “real.” The lively, buoyant tone of the movie never dissipates, however. Allen’s critics sometimes complain that his characters speak in italics rather than regular people—but by now that’s just a stylistic quirk one accepts. Allen’s films (even the earlier, more slapstick ones) have always had a theatrical feel to them, and his arch, erudite dialogue and snappy one-liners just reinforce that oddness. Woody Allen isn’t a master of cinéma vérité or documentary realism—his films create stylized, artificial worlds just like the unique movies of Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino or Tim Burton. And like these directors, Allen’s “world” isn’t for everyone—but there’s something fascinating and compulsively watchable about his weird mixture of high-toned intellectualism, knee-jerk pessimism, and comedy of mortification and guilt. Even Allen’s well-documented personal life adds to the strangeness of his films. Allen is obsessed with the “forbidden” and as a person he’s crossed the line a few times, but in his movies his hero-surrogates try to figure out where the line is, and for a filmmaker supposedly “out of touch” with the modern world, Allen’s interest in human psychology isn’t shallow or glib. Café Society emerges as one of his more memorable portraits of a conflicted Everyman who must choose between right and wrong. Eisenberg’s slightly arrogant demeanor makes him the perfect actor for Bobby (whose narration as an older, wiser man is provided by Allen himself)—not wholly sympathetic, but recognizable as someone not unlike us. He’s surrounded by wonderful supporting players but Eisenberg is the rock that keeps Allen’s ode to Hollywood from becoming too lightweight. Filled with genuine affection for Hollywood and fear of its pervasive shallowness, Café Society is funny, contemplative, and like the best comedies, serious at its core.