A Rainy Day in New York

Lately I seem to be on a Woody Allen kick. As chance would have it, I wrote about the premiere of his film A Rainy Day in New York exactly one year ago. It had to settle for Paris for its premiere, since Allen’s producers (Amazon) got cold feet about being his producers. Two days ago Allen announced on Facebook that the film “will be playing in select theaters starting tomorrow.” I didn’t catch it in a select theater – I caught it on my Fox Movies cable channel here in the middle of nowhere (actually the Philippines). That, in itself, says a great deal about what’s been happening to Woody Allen’s work for the last few years. 

I’ve managed to see the two films, Café Society and Wonder Wheel, Allen made prior to Rainy Day and the latter film is superior only insofar as it isn’t a period piece. But it has two factors richly in its favor – like Manhattan, it’s subject is New York. So Allen shows us several of his favorite places and views, and Allen himself chose to stay behind the camera (where he has always belonged). The protagonist isn’t anything like the typical nebbish schlemiel invariably played by him. 

As usual, however, Allen’s characters are all more or less mouthpieces for his wisecracking dialogue. They are differentiated only because of the vicissitudes of casting. Again, Allen’s leading characters are virtual children. Timothée Chalamet, who was 21 when the film was made, plays Gatsby Welles, a student at an upstate New York college called Yardley, whose girlfriend, Ashleigh Enright (Elle Fanning, 19 during shooting) writes for the college newspaper and has landed an interview with celebrated Indie film director Roland Pollard in Manhattan. She’s never been to New York, and Gatsby, who just won twenty grand in a campus card game, offers to be her guide. 

In the film’s opening scenes at Yardley, Vittorio Storaro’s honey-glazed cinematography, in which it seems to be perpetually late afternoon, sets an autumnal tone. He has worked on Allen’s four latest films, and he is perfectly attuned to what seem to me Allen’s valedictories. Nostalgia has been his dominant theme since the 1980s, and here it's expressed in the music Allen uses throughout the film. "I Got Lucky in the Rain" is sung by Bing Crosby under the opening credits. 

The trouble with Ashleigh, as Gatsby soon discovers, is that she’s totally unworldly, a real hick. He quotes Cole Porter and she thinks it's Shakespeare. When she conducts her interview, Gatsby spends his time looking up old haunts. The city “has its own agenda,” however, and both of them are swept up by chance encounters. Ashleigh ends the rainy night in a raincoat with only bra and panties underneath, and Gatsby learns an eye-opening secret about his mother that completely alters his - not to mention our - understanding of her.

Allen’s rim-shot worthy one liners whiz past us (my favorite is when Gatsby’s mother asks him why he brought a whore to her party. “An escort," he corrects her. “Let’s not split pubic hairs,” she snipes), but most of them barely register as wit. Liev Schreiber, Jude Law and Diego Luna play types, not characters. It’s nice to see such actors playing even small roles in a Woody Allen film. But it would’ve been much nicer if they were given genuine roles to play. 

The two leads are supposed to be in college, but they remind me more of high schoolers - Holden Caulfield types, but without Holden's excuses. Allen's knowledge of New York is misappropriated by Gatsby Welles, even if his name approptiates the Great American Novel and Film. 

Selena Gomez, believe it or not, comes off best as Chan, the younger sister of one of Gatsby’s old flames. She shares his love for rainy days in New York, and she was conspicuous in her refusal to apologize for appearing in the film. As Justin Bieber’s ex, perhaps she had a bit more to gain than the others had to lose. Allen now has Rifkin’s Festival to promote, since no one else wants to. As for A Rainy Day in New York, I can think of worse things to do with a Sunday afternoon.