Serve, Return, Rally, Lob, Smash – Love.

Rigorous love-game and stalking game-play – or is it the other way ’round? – make WIMBLEDON an enjoyable afternoon on the green.

Peter Colt (British Nice Guy Paul Bettany) was once ranked 11th in the tennis world; now in his thirties, he finds himself 119th and dispiritedly shopping for jobs as a tennis instructor. But he’s going to give Wimbledon one last shot before announcing his retirement. (And during that announcement, the Hot Young Tennis Stud (Austin Nichols) enters the press room and dilutes even that one last moment for Peter.)

Lizzie Bradbury (American Bad Girl Kirsten Dunst) on the other hand, is a rising tennis star, here to breeze through Wimbledon, her iron-fisted manager-dad Dennis (Sam Neill) watching over her.

Peter and Lizzie Meet Cute on a tennis court (where else?) and start romancing the hell outa the film (you know, going on walk-dates with ice cream in parks and laughing at stuff that we can’t hear because the boppy source music is playing over the audio of the sickening montage). When reporters find them holed up in hotel rooms, the press jumps down their throat – as does father Dennis (Sam Neill hasn’t been this menacing since he was the Anti-Christ), warning Peter not to distract his daughter from her tennis career.

He keeps winning because of her. She keeps losing because of him. Obviously because, like any guy, he’s just fucking and, like any girl, she’s taking it way too seriously. He soars through match after match with Lizzie in the stands, while she – who arrived at Wimbledon prepared to win – struggles through her matches. It gets a tad non-believable when he’s climbing trestles to sneak into her hotel room against the wishes of Dennis 666…

Number 1 Cuke Seed

For those who could care less for all the tennis racket (ha! See what I did?), WIMBLEDON is produced well enough not to bore us with tennis being the focus – match play is compressed and kinetically shot – yet for tennis buffs, it’s more thrilling than being there for these very reasons. Authentic? It is shot at the All England Club itself –  Wimbledon. And the tennis form of all the principals looks very professional – maybe not championship level, but definitely not weekend warrior banality with bended elbow and over-running the ball. We are either seeing very good rallies culled from hours of play, or seeing very good special effects. Either way – it’s got balls. (Ha! See what I did again?)

Bernard Hill and Eleanor Bron are Peter’s polar opposite parents (mum pretends not to be interested in Peter’s matches – she loves him unconditionally, while dad fanatically carries a portable TV with him everywhere in the house, digesting every grass court point). James McAvoy is comic relief as Peter’s porn-loving brother, who constantly bets against him, to the chagrin of even his bookies: “If he loses, I make money, if he wins, I get laid!” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is Peter’s coach, a fun/flip interaction that proves poignant in the end. Real life tennis legends John McEnroe and Chris Evert are commentators.

And then – Favreau Favreau Favreau!!! The swinging director of IRON MAN (who would relegate Paul Bettany to a faithful computer butler in that film) turns up as Peter’s agent – due to Peter’s rise in prominence, ready to cut promotional deals with him again.

So the flow chart is rallying smoothly: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But WIMBLEDON establishes it is not a juvenile romancer, so we cannot bank on the smash-shot of the boy getting the girl and winning Wimbledon. We can see a net-ball coming, where the filmmakers will resolve the romance, but then to balance Peter’s life, won’t let him win the title. Wouldn’t it be just plain greed to nab fame and fortune as well as the girl? Love is all that matters, right?

But as Lizzie says when she’s breaking up with him: “I really don’t love you. Love means nothing in tennis – zero.”

If we thought the Wimbledon Finals tennis match would be tacked onto the end of the movie like an afterthought – the whole third act is the match, drawing out the suspense to divot-punching proportions. Let the nail-biting begin. Is it actually OUR greed that the filmmakers are playing on?

But it’s an unfair advantage from the get-go: Consider that Peter can track every nuance in the ball bounce, every trajectory and uneven patch of grass, every strike potentiality… he’s Iron Man’s computer!

Further, deponent sayeth not.

END

Unmatched.

There is such a brilliant hook in Woody Allen‘s MATCH POINT that to say anything about it would ruin its impact.

So I’m going to anyway. It’s the woman in me.

Writer-director Allen leans so heavily on the tennis idiom (from opening the film with a tennis analogy dependent on luck – a ball nicking the top edge of the net – to the lead character being an ex-tennis pro, to the title of the film itself) that he hooks us wholeheartedly into the idea that any ball that nicks the net needs to go over the net to win.

Advantage: Poffy

Then the movie does exactly the opposite. To say any more would be far too feminine…

Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is that ex-tennis pro turned instructor at an exclusive London club, where – as luck would have it – he befriends a painfully upper-class British tennis student, Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), who invites him to an opera, where his sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer) then falls for Chris. And like any good friend, Chris promptly falls for Tom’s fiancé, Nola (Scarlett Johansson).

In a situation which might have easily degenerated into a tiresome love-quadrangle farce, MATCH POINT instead adopts a stance contrary to that of any given formulaic “American” Love Story. In other words, it is not a complete waste of time, brain cells, funding, resources and talent.

How Woody Allen, a steadfast New Yorker, managed to capture the upper-class British idiom so concisely is a wonder. Sure, employing British actors helps, but the writing seems inherently British from the outset. For example, when Nola comments on her fiancé Tom being handsome and asks whether Chris also finds him handsome, without any hesitation, embarrassment, or sophomoric gay innuendo, Chris replies, “Very.” Decidedly NOT an American response.

Further, in crafting the film on location in London, the censorious MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) seem to exert less of a stranglehold on “injurious” themes, especially their insulting edict, “no crime shall go unpunished.” When unpunished crime, abortion or infidelity arise in MATCH POINT, there is no moralism attached, no proselytizing or justification. Whereas wide-release American movies have reached a point where they must explain or justify every action for their dim-witted, lazy demographic (thereby becoming a collective insult to their own audiences by their very pandering existence), this movie floats free of those strictures, and is crisper, more mature and infinitely more powerful for it.

Realizing that operatic themes were nothing more than the pulp fiction of their day, Allen slyly uses the melodrama of opera as a backdrop, enabling him to push the pulp envelope. When Chris Wilton is forced into deciding which woman he wants to retain in his life, the faux-operatic extremities he takes are congruent with the opera soundtrack enhancing the surrealism. Like Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Chris remains unrepentant; like Verdi’s La Traviata, his lover is a whore, and like Eastwood’s HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER he’s going to resolve the problem in very stylish pants.

In true European idiom, Chris thankfully does not assess which woman he “loves” more; he assesses his future – and acts accordingly. At last: Truth in a movie! Though the American Teen Power Phrase “Do you love her?” was brought into play for the Great Unwashed to sink their blunted teeth into, it is never dwelt upon, this story intelligently illustrating how codifying or measuring “love” does not resolve harsh realities. Unlike the formulaic drivel that informs ninety-percent of character motivation in films, Chris’ final, fateful decision is not made because he feared losing love, but because he feared losing his enablement.

Like a more intense Ewan McGregor, Rhys Meyers’ aloof intensity is something that American actors must work hard to attain (excepting Clint Eastwood). His reptilian charm defines the term “smooth criminal.” We discover how smooth in the film’s final frames.

The UK cast – down to the smallest bit parts – are flawless, including Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton as Chris’ in-laws, Ewen Bremner and James Nesbitt as flustered detectives and Rupert Penry-Jones as a tennis pro friend and Margaret Tyzack as a doddering neighbor.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers wins Casual Friday.

Scarlett Johansson is almost not ready to be placed amongst this cast, as her jarring American acting training clashes irreconcilably with the fluid ease of the UK ensemble. Satirizing Shatner has become passé, for what comedian Kevin Pollak termed his “pause acting,” yet Shatner merely accentuated a certain American Method. In American movies featuring American actors all purveying this Method in varying degrees, it goes unnoticed. Held against the naturalistic European Method, it is virtually unwatchable, Johansson’s most irritating Shatner occurring during the scene where she opens up to Rhys Meyers after a failed audition, Rhys Meyers’ potent, uninflected replies colliding with her heavily inflected “acting” responses. Though she shines with a flirtatious, needy light in this scene, all that keeps springing to mind is, “Khaaaaan!”

Woody Allen is like Clint Eastwood – well, not in terms of Man With No Name, raptor-eyed, deadly screen presence – but as a film-maker. The older he gets, the more mature and well-made his films become. Or maybe it’s just ME getting older and able to discern the film-making process more intelligently; either way, we’re all getting scarier.

As Eastwood never shies from antisocial and politically-incorrect themes, Allen’s subtexts in this movie are hilarious for their blackness:

As soon as Chris’ wife Chloe makes “getting pregnant” her raison d’etre and as soon as his lover Nola actually gets pregnant, they both become insufferable. With his wife, mechanical, passionless sex, with his mistress, maddening whining and threats, to the point where no amount of bra-less t-shirt-wearing will save her. It is unlikely that women will ever glean the subtext: that it is not sex, marriage or infidelity that drives a man to madness – it is anything to do with pregnancy. Then there is the deeper irony which Woman will refuse to see as long as the species must procreate: that the very thing which she believes seals her future with her mate – pregnancy – in actuality rends his psyche from hers irreconcilably.

Via Woody Allen’s magnificent art, that’s coming straight from the Man in all of us…

END