The crack staff in the procurement department here at Mid Century Cinema managed to secure a copy of Rifkin’s Festival, Woody Allen’s most recent film. And although we tend to shy away from “reviews” at this outfit, since it will likely be some time before North American viewers will have access to this one, an advance scouting report seemed in order. The bottom line: Rifkin’s Festival is a very pleasant film, and better than most movies currently on offer; it is a minor Woody but one that lands clearly and firmly on the positive side of the ledger. (Perhaps a notch better than A Rainy Day in New York (2019), which we also coded as a “solid, late Woody” that was “enjoyable throughout”—though Rainy Day’s penultimate scene is riveting and scales heights Rifkin does not achieve.)
The story has a familiar ring: a cynical writer (Wallace Shawn) is the trailing spouse of a publicist (Gina Gershon) attending the San Sebastian Film Festival to promote the latest effort of an extremely French director (Louis Garrel) whose films are not only showered with praise by the Most Serious Critics, but also promise to end world hunger and assure peace in the Middle East. Marital ennui, infidelity, and general soul searching ensues. The cast is invariably reliable, down to the small parts filled by regulars like Douglas McGrath (who co-wrote Bullets over Broadway), and if you love Wallace Shawn, as we do, you’ll love him here. Also of note, and new-to-Woody is third-generation triple-threat Louis Garrel, who is simply pitch perfect. (We most recently enjoyed his presence in season five of the outstanding French drama The Bureau.)
It is certainly fair to say that with Rifkin’s Festival Allen is to some extent running around the same old ground—but at eighty-five, with five decades and fifty plus films in the can, surely that is not entirely shocking. (Ingmar Bergman was the same age when he made Saraband—a flat out masterpiece, but it is not a picture that would be accused of exploring new thematic terrain.) And, again, if familiar, it is nevertheless eminently enjoyable and often laugh-out-loud funny. And movie lovers will find its dream sequences, which feature re-imagined versions of art-house classics (Citizen Kane, Breathless, Jules and Jim, The Seventh Seal, and Persona, to name a few) simply irresistible. Rifkin’s Festival is also beautifully shot—this is Allen’s fourth collaboration with legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and his best films have always been distinguished by the contributions of extraordinarily talented directors of photography, including, of course, Gordon Willis, as well as Carlo Di Palma, Vilmos Zsigmond and Sven Nykvist, among others.
Finally, in the spirit of these comments as a scouting report, let us offer a reassuring “un-spoiler” alert. In the first half of the movie, it looks like something cringingly implausible might be developing between seventy-something Shawn and forty-five year old Elena Anaya (who plays the Spanish physician that Shawn’s character first consults and then befriends), raising the squirm-inducing prospect that Rifkin will lazily fall back on such an exhausted trope. (A would-be ruinous plot twist to be sure, but it is also necessary to be alert to the double standards and rank hypocrisy with which Allen films are increasingly assessed. Consider and compare, for example, the extent to which an avalanche of critics fell over themselves in praise of The Phantom Thread, in which sixty year old Daniel Day Lewis grooms a woman young enough to be his daughter so she can take her place as the latest in a conveyor belt of nubile paramours.) Thankfully, however, Rifkin’s Festival barely comes within a stone’s throw of that disastrous narrative turn. Indeed, the central romantic relationship in this film takes place between a thirty-seven year old man and a fifty-eight year old woman.
In sum, Allen continues apace – another year, another movie – in the past decade some have been better than others, but at least seven have been worth watching, with two or three of those quite excellent. How long might this continue? The pipeline has been interrupted by the pandemic and is ultimately threatened, inevitably, by advancing age; in addition future endeavors are likely now limited to European productions, due to the powerful – and largely un-scrutinized – smear campaign that has been orchestrated against him in the media. But with luck there will be future additions to one of the most noteworthy cinematic oeuvres of the last half century.