Café Society is Woody Allen's 47th, and Maybe Final, Try

Jessie Eisenberg looks like the auteur. In fact, everything here does

Early on in Café Society, Bobby Dorfman observes his uncle's Hollywood soirée, full of poolside schmoozing and Champagne, and Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) describes himself as "half-bored, half-fascinated." It's such a glaring bit of Woody Allen dialogue. And you'll spend the next hour wondering if it'll come to describe the film that is every bit as effervescent, tanned and star-studded as the party.

In Allen's 47th feature, the doe-eyed Bobby arrives in 1930s Los Angeles looking more for an experience than a calling. New York is no life. His mother and father bicker. His sister is married in the suburbs. His brother is a two-bit gangster, though everyone looks the other way. In California, he knows no one but his uncle Phil (Steve Carrell), an in-demand film agent, though he soon begins rubbing elite shoulders and courting Phil's assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart).

The annual Woody Allen production machine has assembled 90 very recognizable minutes here, with self-aware industry commentary, platitudes about New York and L.A., Jewish parentage, infidelity and a male ingénue looking for approval. As those spill onto the screen, Café Society unfolds more like a biography of the quintessential Allen protagonist than a comedy. It's calm and reflective to the point of drowsiness, like a very old man (Allen is now 80) dreaming the trivial life of a young one. Bobby's ultimate revelation, after he's fallen in, out and back into love with Vonnie, is that time has passed. He can't rewind, and he's going to stare into the middle distance about it. That seriousness makes Café Society less dainty than Allen's 21st-century Parisian or Mediterranean tourism movies, but there's no body in this shell.

In the tradition of recent Allen actor proxies like Owen Wilson and Joaquin Phoenix, Eisenberg is an uncanny mimic of the director himself. He stammers and inflects upward on his incredulous questions ("Wha-what are you talking about!?"), but he can't make the neuroses sing. In a cast that also includes Carrell, Corey Stoll, Blake Lively and Parker Posey, only Stewart feels like she's not auditioning to play the writer. Cast as angelic, she's defiantly normal. To say none of them has chemistry together is an understatement. During the movie's most marquee bits, like Carrell trying to profess love as he's constantly interrupted by Hollywood suits, the characters don't seem to be even speaking to each other.

The period romcom is visually arresting—that's the "half-fascinating" aspect. Perpetually waning light makes a color palette that's all in shades of brown: wool slacks, vintage cars, mahogany, adobe brick, cheap drapes and whiskey. The camera is graceful in its performer-oriented movements, but the New York and California backdrops are used like expensive paintings. Wealth, age, delusion, avoidance—the audience can take its pick why the past 15 years of Allen's work find him withdrawn further and further from reality. Most tellingly, the filmmaker who pioneered New-York-is-a-character romcoms 40 years ago now renders the city as though he's never been there.

Café Society is a movie of references. Cut to a nugget of Dorfman family history (in the style of visual footnotes Allen has used since the '70s). Breathlessly name-drop golden-age movie stars like Ginger Rogers, William Powell and Joel McCrea. A little Central Park in the morning, a dash of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the afternoon. Perhaps it's not an accident that the entire film is lit like a gloaming. Café Society itself is a reference to a career that at long, and recently agonizing, last is nearly over.

Critic's Grade: C-

SEE IT: Café Society is rated R. It opens Friday at Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Fox Tower.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.