Woody Allen's latest film deals with the alienating potential of dreams. However, as with some of his recent work, this one gets a too bogged down in hyper-neurotic reflexivity that undermines what it could have been.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sadly, there really isn't that much to recommend this film. Very sadly. As with some of Woody Allen's more recent films, this one quickly becomes quite irritating as Woody's signature neurosis comes to permeate every scene, every sentence, even every inflection of speech. Nothing seems to miss his impression, and every moment reminds us about who has written the dialogue more than anything else, with the endless self-reflexivity that characterizes this nerosis becoming the object itself, leaving the actual events that happen as mearly fodder to be commented on. Indeed, interestingly, certain sections of the film where Allen is narrating events end-up seeming like some kind of cinematic documentary, rather than a film itself, since the film never achieves the kind of emotional depth within which to ground its commentary. To that end, the entire film ends-up seeming well intentioned, but unable to live up to its own potential. That said, there are two memorable things in the film worth considering.

First, there is this potential the film never lives up to: as the film ends, it becomes clear that the intended effect of showing us two disjointed narratives¹ was to establish the kind of irreconcilability characteristic of compromised lives that don't live-up to the dreams they have for themselves. Bobby falls in love while out in California, but doesn't like living there amidst the superficality of the movie business and so must leave to return to New York to find a way to build a life for himself through his connections in a place from which he comes, grew up. For his lover (Vonnie) in California, she shares Bobby's distaste for the whole Hollywood scene but is herself able to compromise her convictions to live that life with Bobby's uncle Phil, despite herself, going on to become an active member of that jet-set society of glamour, fame, and gossip. Despite that the two have made these compromises, they remain, underneath it all, in love with one another, as we see when the two happen to run-into eachother again when she visits with his uncle, now her husband, in New York and make a stop at Bobby's club. What the film shows us, or at least what it indicates to us without making such a significant and meaningful point about it, is that dreams can also be alienating. Rather than bringing two people together in love to share a dream about life, or bringing a group of people together around a shared vision, the dreams Allen shows us here are the kinds that aren't realized: they are forever romantic, but private, never to be actualized. As such, they corrode one's relationship to their actual surroundings and life: celebrating on New Years for each of them what should be good year, both are caught reflecting on the life that could have been or could be. Each is alone in their own life, though surrounded by a crowd.

Second, there is a brief scene when Vonnie comes to New York and she elopes with Bobby for a day on the town together to do the things they planned to do at one point while together in California, and end-up in Central park drinking champagne.

[For the moment, the video of this scene is blocked because of copyright. But, if you have the film, it begins at 1:36:00]

Vonnie says, basically: 'look at us, drinking champagne in Central park at sunset...you've always had a little bit of the poetic in you'. To which Bobby replies: 'you know I'm not like that'. This is an interesting point: the idea of poetry without the poetic, without and pretense to be poetic, but that is or becomes poetic despite itself. This is perhaps the most pure definition of art or of romance or love: that it becomes what it is, not because we want it to or will it to be that way, but simply because it is that way. The raw, bare reality of actions taken without thought of them, the champagne we grab to take with us for the crisp cool evening, to cap-off an enjoyable day, because we're thirsty. The situation becomes something more than it is, not because we employ signifiers that mark the evening as more significant than others, that mimic something, perhaps cinematic, in an effort to recreate its significance, but simply because, at that moment, we find ourselves, through no direct intention, elevated to something more than ordinary through the situation we happen to find ourselves in, which is simply the culmination of a series of seemingly insignificant acts. That one can do something interesting despite the normality that would otherwise determine the situation, and do it in a non-performative way so that the moment itself becomes something unreflexively is the interesting point. These are the moments in life of pure involvement, of immanence, where we are becoming something we can't foresee, heading towards an unknown future that we aren't trying to force to conform to some image of what it should or could be.

As with many of Woody Allen's films, such a scene would itself fit into something of broader significance, a broader plane of immanence, of the films own trajectory of becoming. It would form a moment of reflection on that becoming, be a moment of poetic significance that would illuminate the whole in its process of transformation. A scene such as we might find in The Purple Rose of Cairo, as Jeff Daniels and Mia Farrow talk in a music shop; or in Radio Days, as the last man heads through the door from the rooftop on New Years night, calling out behind him 'Beware Evil doers, wherever you are'; moments that resonate, punctuate, and leave us changed and affected, that themselves form a perceptible constellation of events upon which to reflect. It would be nice to say that just such a thing happens in Café Society. Sadly, however, it does not, and one of the most obvious reasons for that is the casting, it seems: Jesse Eisenberg and Kirsten Stewart appear more like children in adult roles and totally fail to achieve any semblance of the cinematic, which leaves us, instead, with only indications of moments and characters that might have been. We are left with a point that, in the end, is mostly conceptual, despite its significance. Which leaves us with the sombre reality of our own fading dreams, and the unavoidable fact that, one day, Woody Allen will have one day made his last film, leaving us with only the flickering images of his past work with which to confront the grey reality of our existences.

Footnotes