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Wednesday, September 29, 2021

RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL (2020)

Eavesdropping on Euro-trash regulars offering pretentious/idiotic opinions on international film trends at the San Sebastian Film Festival briefly gives this new Woody Allen film a welcome shot of comic energy.  The good vibe lasts an entire tracking shot.  Then back to the main event, a not particularly funny, insightful or tragic look at a moribund marriage on a picturesque death spiral.  As a filmmaker, Allen more & more like a dray horse who continues to stop at some long abandoned address out of habit, unable to adjust to the fact that no one lives there anymore.  Playing the film’s surrogate Woody, and better at it than most*, Wallace Shawn’s ex-cinema prof is accompanying publicist wife Gina Gershon, at the fest to babysit some clients.  But their twenty year age gap sees them drifting apart.  Naturally, Shawn tries to take comfort with someone twenty years younger yet, a local doc.  (And, for once, Gershon also is hooking up, successfully, with twenty year younger client Louis Garrel.  Progress!)  Shawn’s other relief comes with dreaming his way into classic films he once taught.  Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro with b&w mockups of CITIZEN KANE, 8½, JULES AND JIM, A MAN AND A WOMAN, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, EXTERMINATING ANGEL, SEVENTH SEAL (Christoph Waltz’s ‘Death’ the only funny gag in the lot), plus a quick portrait a la PERSONA in a reprise montage).  Not unpleasant may be damning with the faintest of praise, but, at 85, this old dray horse could use a new set of  addresses.  Even then, Stateside theatrical unlikely.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Back in MANHATTAN days, diminutive, gnome-like Shawn was a gag shot as Diane Keaton’s unexpected ‘ex.’  Now, after 40 years, he’s playing Woody.

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