You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

As this is the second new Woody Allen film that I’ve seen recently, I actually struggle to think of new things to say. Of course, I should consider the movie on its own merits, but it’s very hard to do this when you’re dealing with a director with such a vast body of work behind him. We may be able to read/view an artist’s one piece of work in isolation, but it is very often the connections between work that build a profound, more complex, meaning. We come to understand an artist in terms of his/her whole output, and this is a fascinating thing, even though sometimes it is an inconvenience to certain readings we may want to undertake (and this isn’t just a recent phenomenon: see Homer, Virgil etc.). This film is about two couples in London and their search to find happiness. Anthony Hopkins has a late-mid-life crisis and splits with his wife, whilst their daughter struggles in her relationship with her husband, an aspiring writer. The issues and dilemmas these characters face are familiar from Allen’s previous films (if at least original outside them). They try to attach happiness to success, or children, or spirituality, and the drama works quite well, if not quite as funny, or not quite as sharp as it could’ve been. The ending, however, is where the film is let down. The various threads are left hanging, instead of being tied neatly together. Everything is not resolved, although the narrator makes the point that nothing ever will be for certain characters. I do have a problem with this narrator, though, other than that he is almost unnecessary: why is he American? The answer may just be that Woody Allen is American, and the film is intended to appeal to an audience there, but it makes no sense for the story, set in London, with everyone except one character being European. Woody Allen’s London films (which now, it seems, we can talk about as a phase in the past) have been a fascinating resurgence, with one notable success, and as he moves further into Europe it seems he is being inspired to make better and better projects. Although You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is not as good as some of them, it still rises to this new level, and furthers his reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.