Rifkin's Festival

 Rifkin's Festival is a film written and directed by Woody Allen; apparently released in 2020, the picture is just now available on Amazon Prime. Of course, Woody Allen has been maligned for a number of years on the basis of his marriage to his stepdaughter and a variety of other allegations asserting abusive behavior.  These claims have traction in the United States and have created a climate of disapproval so pervasive that Allen can't get financing for his work in this country.  But movies are a transnational enterprise and, apparently, the director is able to secure money in Europe where his films continued to enjoy some modest success. (Allen also remains a magnet for excellent actors -- his pictures, often, have significant star-power despite their modest scope and ambition:  Wally Shawn appears as Rifkin in this picture along with Gina Gershon as the hero's glamorous wife and the European performers in his movies, often French or Spanish actors, are uniformly compelling.) Woody Allen films comprise a genre of their own and, at least to my sensibility, they are always amusing, wry, sometimes quite funny, and worth watching -- just don't hope for some kind of cinematic breakthrough or epiphany.  Allen has become so highly expert at making these late-career films that they seem minimalist, effortlessly contrived, and exceedingly lightweight -- they are, in effect, escapist fare for filmgoers who don't want to see explosions and mayhem on screen.  

Allen's films have always relied upon a simple, if effective, sight gag -- his movies couple unsightly sexually inert men with extremely glamorous romantic partners.  The first shot in Rifkin's Festival exemplifies this gag:  the gorgeous Gina Gershon as Sue walks beside her husband, Rifkin, toward an expensive hotel in San Sebastien. Gershon is beautiful, lavishly dressed, sleek, elegant and sexy; Wally Shawn is a schlub wearing ill-fitting jeans that seem to perpetually threaten to drop to his ankles, an old man with a crooked back and bulging eyes who looks like a frog, some sort of enchanted prince in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale -- he's so ugly and misshapen that he's almost cute, a little troll of a man.  Of course, the audience marvels at this odd couple and they are walking/talking joke.  All of Allen's pictures exploit the contrast between a nondescript or, even, unhandsome male protagonist and one or more lovely women who seem to be sexually interested in him.  In Rifkin's Festival, the protagonist attends a film festival at San Sebastien with his wife, a publicist.  She is providing PR (and sexual favors as well) to a French director named Phillippe, a broodingly handsome man, probably fifteen years younger than her.  Rifkin is a neurotic hypochondriac, always kvetching about things, and he seems to appreciate, on some level, that is wife is having an affair with the pretentious and dull-witted, if gorgeous, director.  When Rifkin suffers from some chest pains, he sees a local physician, also a beautiful woman named Dr. Jo Rojas.  Rifkin flirts with Dr. Rojas and, in order to keep seeing her, pesters the physician with obviously bogus symptoms.  She responds to his flirtation and the two of them spend a day together exploring the lovely countryside around the city, enjoying a picnic on the grass. (I'm always impressed by these elderly actors seating themselve with spry abandon on the grass; if I sat down on the grass it would take a hoist to lift me off the ground.) Returning to Dr. Rojas' home, the couple encounter her irritating and melodramatic boyfriend, a painter.  There's a quarrel and Dr. Rojas is inspired to leave her lover, at least, temporarily.  However, she is not willing to embark on an actual affair with Rifkin.  Sue, the publicist, confesses that she is sleeping with Phillippe.  She and Rifkin's marriage has fallen apart, albeit in the most low-key and civilized way possible.  Rifkin returns to New York City and the movie begins as it began with an analytical high-angle shot of the hero conferring with his shrink.  The film is about mild flirtations in expensive restaurants, strolls along beautiful seashores, and tiny sparks of jealousy that flare infrequently.  Rifkin is a failed novelist -- he's working interminably on a big book --that is supposed to give Joyce and Dostoevsky a run for their money; of course, by definition, the book will never be completed.  Years earlier, Rifkin taught film at the university and the movie refers to the great classics of European cinema in short black and white vignettes presented as Rifkin's fantasies or dreams -- we get amusing parodies of Jules and Jim, Citizen Kane, A Man and a Woman, Breathless, Persona, 8 1/2, The Exterminating Angel, and, at the end, The Seventh Seal.  These tiny episodes are the film's comedic core and the highlights of the movies.  The wonderful cinematography by Vittorio Storaro impressively mimics the black-and-white style in which these films were made.  Andy Warhol once said that all cokes are alike and all cokes are good.  The same can be said of Woody Allen's films made in the last quarter century -- they are mostly indistinguishable from one another, slight affairs and a beautifully made and acted with gorgeous camerawork and good performances but, ultimately, trivial.  Nonetheless, the movies are entertaining -- at least, I like them.

Christoph Walz, playing the figure of Death from The Seventh Seal, confronts Rifkin on the beach.  There is a chess board among the gloomy rocks.  Rifkin whines that his life is empty and meaningless.  Death won't have any of this.  He says:  "Of course, your life is meaningless.  But don't confuse 'empty" with 'meaningless'.  Your life isn't empty.  You've got lots to do."  There's a moral lurking somewhere in this droll exchange, but I don't know precisely what.