Сценарий матч поинт

Match Point
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by	Woody Allen
Written by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Letty Aronson Gareth Wiley Lucy Darwin
Starring	Brian Cox Matthew Goode Scarlett Johansson Emily Mortimer Jonathan Rhys Meyers Penelope Wilton
Cinematography	Remi Adefarasin
Edited by	Alisa Lepselter
Production companies	DreamWorks Pictures BBC Films Thema Production Jada Productions
Distributed by	Icon Film Distribution (United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) DreamWorks Pictures (North America)
Release dates	12 May 2005 (Cannes) 6 January 2006 (United Kingdom) 20 January 2006 (United States)
Running time	124 minutes[1]
Countries	United Kingdom[2] United States[2] Luxembourg[2]
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$85.3 million[3]

Match Point is a 2005 psychological thriller film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, and Penelope Wilton. In the film, Rhys Meyers’ character marries into a wealthy family, but his social position is threatened by his affair with his brother-in-law’s girlfriend, played by Scarlett Johansson. The film deals with themes of morality and greed, and explores the roles of lust, money, and luck in life, leading many to compare it to Allen’s earlier film Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). It was produced and filmed in London after Allen had difficulty finding financial support for the film in New York. The agreement obliged him to make it there using a cast and crew mostly from the United Kingdom. Allen quickly re-wrote the script, which was originally set in New York, for a British setting.

Critics in the United States praised the film and its British setting, and welcomed it as a return to form for Allen. In contrast, reviewers from the United Kingdom treated Match Point less favorably, finding fault with the locations and especially the British idiom in the dialogues. Allen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Plot[edit]

Chris Wilton, a recently retired tennis professional from Ireland, is taken on as an instructor at an upmarket club in London. He strikes up a friendship with a wealthy pupil, Tom Hewett, after discovering their common affinity for opera. Tom’s older sister, Chloe, is smitten with Chris, and the two begin dating. During a family gathering, Chris meets Tom’s American fiancée, Nola Rice, and they are instantly attracted to each other. Tom’s mother, Eleanor, does not approve of her son’s relationship with Nola, a struggling actress. This is a source of tension in the family. Chloe persuades her father, Alec, to give Chris a job as an executive in one of his companies. Alec does so, and Chris begins to be accepted into the family, and marriage is discussed.

One afternoon, Nola’s choice of profession is questioned by Eleanor, and Nola leaves the house in anger during a rainstorm. Chris follows Nola outside and confesses his feelings for her, and they passionately have sex in a wheat field. Feeling guilty, Nola treats this as an accident. Chris, however, wants an ongoing clandestine relationship. Chris and Chloe marry, while Tom ends his relationship with Nola.

Chloe, to her distress, does not become pregnant immediately. Chris vainly tries to track down Nola, but meets her by chance sometime later at Tate Modern. He discreetly asks for her number, and they begin an affair. While Chris is spending time with his wife’s family, Nola calls to inform him that she is pregnant. Panicked, Chris asks her to get an abortion, but she refuses, saying that she wants to raise the child with him. Chris becomes distant from Chloe, who suspects he is having an affair, which he denies. Nola urges Chris to divorce his wife, and he feels trapped and finds himself lying to Chloe as well as to Nola. Nola confronts him on the street outside his apartment and he just barely escapes public detection.

Soon afterwards, Chris takes a shotgun from his father-in-law’s home and carries it to his office in a tennis bag. After leaving the office, he calls Nola on her mobile to tell her he has good news for her. He goes to Nola’s building and gains entry into the apartment of her neighbor, Mrs. Eastby, whom he shoots and kills and then stages a burglary by ransacking the rooms and stealing jewelry and drugs. As Nola returns, he shoots her in the stairwell. Chris then takes a taxi to the theater to watch a musical with Chloe. Scotland Yard investigates the crime and concludes it was likely committed by a drug addict stealing money. The following day, as the murder is in the news, Chris returns the shotgun and he and Chloe announce that she is pregnant.

Detective Mike Banner invites Chris for an interview in relation to the murder. Before he goes in to see the detectives, Chris throws Mrs. Eastby’s jewelry and drugs into the river, but by chance her ring bounces on the railing and falls to the pavement. This imagery ties in to the opening scene when a tennis ball hits the net, but bounces back, and the narrator (Chris) says, «The man who said, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good,’ saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.»

At the police station, Chris lies about his relationship with Nola, but Banner surprises him with her diary, in which he is featured extensively. He confesses his affair but denies any link to the murder, and appeals to the detectives not to involve him further in their investigation as news of the affair may end his marriage just as he and his wife are expecting a baby.

One night, Chris sees apparitions of Nola and Mrs. Eastby, who tell him to be ready for the consequences of his actions. He replies that his crimes, though wrong, had been «necessary», and that he is able to suppress his guilt. The same night, Banner dreams that Chris committed the murders.

The next morning, however, his theory is discredited by his partner, Dowd, who informs him that a drug addict found murdered on the streets had Mrs. Eastby’s ring in his pocket. Banner and Dowd consider the case closed and abandon any further investigation. Chloe gives birth to a baby boy named Terence, and his uncle blesses him not with greatness but with luck.

Cast[edit]

• Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton
• Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice
• Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett Wilton
• Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett
• Brian Cox as Alec Hewett
• Penelope Wilton as Eleanor Hewett
• Ewen Bremner as Inspector Dowd
• James Nesbitt as Detective Mike Banner
• Rupert Penry-Jones as Henry
• Margaret Tyzack as Mrs. Betty Eastby
• Alexander Armstrong as Mr. Townsend
• Geoffrey Streatfeild as Alan Sinclair
• Miranda Raison as Heather
• Zoe Telford as Samantha
• Rose Keegan as Carol
• Colin Salmon as Ian
• Toby Kebbell as Policeman
• Paul Kaye as Estate Agent
• Steve Pemberton as Detective Parry

Production[edit]

The script was originally set in The Hamptons, a wealthy enclave in New York, but was transferred to London when Allen found financing for the film there.^[4] The film was partly funded by BBC Films, which required that he make the film in the UK with largely local cast and crew. In an interview with The Observer, Allen explained that he was allowed «the same kind of creative liberal attitude that I’m used to», in London. He complained that the American studio system was not interested in making small films: «They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m.»^[5] A further change was required when Kate Winslet, who was supposed to play the part of Nola Rice, resigned a week before filming was scheduled to begin. Scarlett Johansson was offered the part, and accepted, but the character had to be re-written as an American. According to Allen, «It was not a problem…It took about an hour.»^[5]

Filming took place in London in the summer of 2004 over a seven-week schedule.^[5] Some of the city’s landmarks, such as Tate Modern, Norman Foster’s «Gherkin» building at 30 St Mary Axe, Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s building, the Royal Opera House, the Palace of Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, and Cambridge Circus form a backdrop to the film.^[6] The tennis club scenes were filmed at the Queen’s Club.^[5] One of the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus lecture theatres was also used. UK-based graffiti artist Banksy’s Girl With Balloon appears briefly in the film. One of the Parliament View apartments at Lambeth Bridge was used for interiors of Chris and Chloe’s apartment. The restaurant scene was shot at the Covent Garden Hotel.^[7]

Themes[edit]

The film’s opening voiceover from Wilton introduces its themes of chance and fate, which he characterizes as simple luck, to him all-important. The sequence establishes the protagonist as an introvert, a man who mediates his experience of the world through deliberation, and positions the film’s subjective perspective through his narrative eyes. Charalampos Goyios argued that this hero, as an opera lover, maintains a sense of distance from the outer world and that ramifications therein pale in comparison to the purity of interior experience.^[8]

The film is a debate with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which Wilton is seen reading early on, identifying him with the anti-hero Raskolnikov.^[8] That character is a brooding loner who kills two women to prove that he is a superior being, but is racked by guilt and is finally redeemed by confession of his crime, the love of a young woman forced into prostitution, and the discovery of God. Wilton is a brooding loner who kills a poor girl who loves him because he considers his interests superior to those around him, knows little guilt, and avoids detection through luck. Allen signals his intentions with more superficial similarities: both are almost caught by a painter’s unexpected appearance in the stairwell, and both sleuths play cat and mouse with the suspect. Allen argues, unlike Dostoevsky, that there is neither God, nor punishment, nor love to provide redemption. The theme of parody and reversal of Dostoevsky’s motifs and subject matter has been visited by Allen before, in his film Love and Death. In Love and Death, the dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace.^[9] In Match Point, Allen moves the theme from parody to the more direct engagement of Dostoevsky’s motifs and narratives.^[9]

Allen revisits some of the themes he had explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), such as the existence of justice in the universe. Both films feature a murder of an unwanted mistress, and «offer a depressing view on fate, fidelity, and the nature of man».^[10] That film’s protagonist, Judah Rosenthal, is an affluent member of the upper-middle class having an extramarital affair. After he tries to break the affair off, his mistress blackmails him and threatens to go to his wife. Soon, Rosenthal decides to murder his mistress, but is racked with guilt over violating his moral code. Eventually, he learns to ignore his guilt and go on as though nothing has happened. Philip French compared the two films’ plots and themes in The Observer, and characterized Match Point’s as a «clever twist on the themes of chance and fate».^[11]

Money is an important motivator for the characters: both Wilton and Nola come from modest backgrounds and wish to enter the Hewett family using their sex appeal. That family’s secure position is demonstrated by their large country estate, and, early on in their relationships, both prospective spouses are supported by Mr. Hewett, Wilton with a position on «one of his companies» and Nola reports being «swept off her feet» by Hewett’s attention and presents.^[12] Roger Ebert posed the film’s underlying question as «To what degree are we prepared to set aside our moral qualms in order to indulge in greed and selfishness? Wilton is facing a choice between greed and lust, but his sweet wife, Chloe, herself has no qualms about having her father essentially ‘buy’ her husband for her.»^[12]

Jean-Baptiste Morain, writing in Les Inrockuptibles, noticed how the strong do not accept their own weakness and have no qualms about perpetuating an injustice to defend their interests. This wider political sense is, he argued, accentuated by its English setting, where class differences are more marked than in the USA. The film pits passion and the dream of happiness against ambition and arrivisme, resolving the dispute with a pitiless blow that disallows all chance of justice.^[13]

Musical accompaniment[edit]

The film’s soundtrack consists almost entirely of pre-World War I 78 rpm recordings of opera arias sung by the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. This bold use, despite Caruso’s variety of musical styles, constitutes a first for Allen. Opera has been used before in his work as an indicator of social class, such as in Husbands and Wives (1992). In Match Point, the arias and opera extracts make an ironic commentary on the actions of the characters and sometimes foreshadow developments in the movie’s narrative. Furthermore, given Wilton’s status as an introvert and opera enthusiast himself, the accompaniment emphasizes his detachment from his crime.^[8]

The 10-minute murder scene which forms the film’s climax is scored with almost the whole of the Act II duet between Otello and Iago from Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. This is an atypical scoring for a film, since Verdi’s piece is not an aria, but a dramatic dialogue in which the words are as important as the music. Thus the astute spectator will be presented with two dramatic narratives to follow; Allen is not respecting traditional conventions of cinematic accompaniment, since the score’s events do not match the story unfolding onscreen.^[8]

Arias and extracts include work by Verdi (in particular Macbeth, La traviata, Il trovatore and Rigoletto), Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles, and Antônio Carlos Gomes’s Salvator Rosa sung by Caruso. The romanza «Una furtiva lagrima» from L’elisir d’amore is featured repeatedly, including during the opening credits. The Caruso arias are supplemented by diegetic music from contemporary performances that the characters attend over the course of the film. There are scenes at the Royal Opera House and elsewhere performed by opera singers (scenes from La traviata performed by Janis Kelly and Alan Oke, from Rigoletto performed by Mary Hegarty), accompanied by a piano (performed by Tim Lole).^[14]

Reception[edit]

Allen has said that Match Point is one of his few «A-films», and even «arguably may be the best film that I’ve made. This is strictly accidental, it just happened to come out right. You know, I try to make them all good, but some come out and some don’t. With this one everything seemed to come out right. The actors fell in, the photography fell in and the story clicked. I caught a lot of breaks!»^[15]

The film was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.^[16] Match Point broke a streak of box office flops for Allen: it earned $85,306,374 worldwide, of which $23,151,529 was in its North American run.^[3] Allen was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.^[17]

The film received generally strong reviews from critics, particularly in the United States. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 77% based on 216 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website’s critical consensus states: «Woody Allen’s sharpest film in years, Match Point is a taut, philosophical thriller about class and infidelity.»^[18] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 72 out of 100, and thus «generally favorable reviews», based on 40 professional critics.^[19] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars, and considered it among the four best Allen films.^[20] He described it as having a «terrible fascination that lasts all the way through».^[12] Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, calling it Allen’s best of his last half a dozen films, and recommended it even to those who are not fans of the director.^[21]

Reviewers in the United Kingdom were generally less favorable. Philip French, writing in The Observer, criticized Allen’s grasp of British idiom and the film’s lack of humor, especially considering that two comic actors from the UK were cast in minor roles. Also, he called the dialogue «rather lumbering» and said that «the lexicons of neither the City financier nor the London constable are used convincingly.»^[11] Tim Robey, writing in The Daily Telegraph, disdained the claim that the film was Allen’s return to form. Although he acknowledged that the consensus was stronger this time, he called it «as flat-footed a movie as Allen has ever made, a decent idea scuppered by a setting – London – which he treats with the peculiarly tin-eared reverence of a visitor who only thinks he knows his way around.» He called Johansson’s character «the chain-smoking mistress from hell», but said the tennis net analogy has an «unexpectedly crisp payoff» and that the last act was well handled.^[22] Reviewing for the BBC’s website, Andy Jacobs awarded the film four stars out of five, and called it Allen’s best film since Deconstructing Harry (1997). He also criticized some other British reviewers whose dislike, Jacobs stated, was due to the fact that Allen presented an agreeable portrait of middle class life in London. He also praised the performances by Rhys Meyers and Johansson.^[10]

Like many of Allen’s films, Match Point was popular in France: AlloCiné, a cinema information website, gave it a score of 4.4 out of 5, based on a sample of 30 reviews.^[23] In Les Inrockuptibles, a left-wing French cultural magazine, Jean-Baptiste Morain gave the film a strong review, calling it «one of his most accomplished films».^[13] He characterized Allen’s move to London as re-invigorating for him, while recognizing the caricatured portrayal of Britain which made the film less appreciated there than in Allen’s homeland, the United States. Morain called Rhys-Meyers’ and Johansson’s performances «impeccable».^[13]

Match Point has also been the object of scholarship. Joseph Henry Vogel argued the film is exemplary of ecocriticism as an economic school of thought.^[24] Several critics and commentators have compared elements of the film to the central plot of George Stevens’ film A Place in the Sun (1951), but with some characters in reverse positions.^[11][25]

Accolades[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Match Point
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by	Woody Allen
Written by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Letty Aronson Gareth Wiley Lucy Darwin
Starring	Brian Cox Matthew Goode Scarlett Johansson Emily Mortimer Jonathan Rhys Meyers Penelope Wilton
Cinematography	Remi Adefarasin
Edited by	Alisa Lepselter
Production companies	DreamWorks Pictures BBC Films Thema Production Jada Productions
Distributed by	Icon Film Distribution (United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) DreamWorks Pictures (North America)
Release dates	12 May 2005 (Cannes) 6 January 2006 (United Kingdom) 20 January 2006 (United States)
Running time	124 minutes[1]
Countries	United Kingdom[2] United States[2] Luxembourg[2]
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$85.3 million[3]

Match Point is a 2005 psychological thriller film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, and Penelope Wilton. In the film, Rhys Meyers’ character marries into a wealthy family, but his social position is threatened by his affair with his brother-in-law’s girlfriend, played by Scarlett Johansson. The film deals with themes of morality and greed, and explores the roles of lust, money, and luck in life, leading many to compare it to Allen’s earlier film Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). It was produced and filmed in London after Allen had difficulty finding financial support for the film in New York. The agreement obliged him to make it there using a cast and crew mostly from the United Kingdom. Allen quickly re-wrote the script, which was originally set in New York, for a British setting.

Critics in the United States praised the film and its British setting, and welcomed it as a return to form for Allen. In contrast, reviewers from the United Kingdom treated Match Point less favorably, finding fault with the locations and especially the British idiom in the dialogues. Allen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Plot[edit]

Chris Wilton, a recently retired tennis professional from Ireland, is taken on as an instructor at an upmarket club in London. He strikes up a friendship with a wealthy pupil, Tom Hewett, after discovering their common affinity for opera. Tom’s older sister, Chloe, is smitten with Chris, and the two begin dating. During a family gathering, Chris meets Tom’s American fiancée, Nola Rice, and they are instantly attracted to each other. Tom’s mother, Eleanor, does not approve of her son’s relationship with Nola, a struggling actress. This is a source of tension in the family. Chloe persuades her father, Alec, to give Chris a job as an executive in one of his companies. Alec does so, and Chris begins to be accepted into the family, and marriage is discussed.

One afternoon, Nola’s choice of profession is questioned by Eleanor, and Nola leaves the house in anger during a rainstorm. Chris follows Nola outside and confesses his feelings for her, and they passionately have sex in a wheat field. Feeling guilty, Nola treats this as an accident. Chris, however, wants an ongoing clandestine relationship. Chris and Chloe marry, while Tom ends his relationship with Nola.

Chloe, to her distress, does not become pregnant immediately. Chris vainly tries to track down Nola, but meets her by chance sometime later at Tate Modern. He discreetly asks for her number, and they begin an affair. While Chris is spending time with his wife’s family, Nola calls to inform him that she is pregnant. Panicked, Chris asks her to get an abortion, but she refuses, saying that she wants to raise the child with him. Chris becomes distant from Chloe, who suspects he is having an affair, which he denies. Nola urges Chris to divorce his wife, and he feels trapped and finds himself lying to Chloe as well as to Nola. Nola confronts him on the street outside his apartment and he just barely escapes public detection.

Soon afterwards, Chris takes a shotgun from his father-in-law’s home and carries it to his office in a tennis bag. After leaving the office, he calls Nola on her mobile to tell her he has good news for her. He goes to Nola’s building and gains entry into the apartment of her neighbor, Mrs. Eastby, whom he shoots and kills and then stages a burglary by ransacking the rooms and stealing jewelry and drugs. As Nola returns, he shoots her in the stairwell. Chris then takes a taxi to the theater to watch a musical with Chloe. Scotland Yard investigates the crime and concludes it was likely committed by a drug addict stealing money. The following day, as the murder is in the news, Chris returns the shotgun and he and Chloe announce that she is pregnant.

Detective Mike Banner invites Chris for an interview in relation to the murder. Before he goes in to see the detectives, Chris throws Mrs. Eastby’s jewelry and drugs into the river, but by chance her ring bounces on the railing and falls to the pavement. This imagery ties in to the opening scene when a tennis ball hits the net, but bounces back, and the narrator (Chris) says, «The man who said, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good,’ saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.»

At the police station, Chris lies about his relationship with Nola, but Banner surprises him with her diary, in which he is featured extensively. He confesses his affair but denies any link to the murder, and appeals to the detectives not to involve him further in their investigation as news of the affair may end his marriage just as he and his wife are expecting a baby.

One night, Chris sees apparitions of Nola and Mrs. Eastby, who tell him to be ready for the consequences of his actions. He replies that his crimes, though wrong, had been «necessary», and that he is able to suppress his guilt. The same night, Banner dreams that Chris committed the murders.

The next morning, however, his theory is discredited by his partner, Dowd, who informs him that a drug addict found murdered on the streets had Mrs. Eastby’s ring in his pocket. Banner and Dowd consider the case closed and abandon any further investigation. Chloe gives birth to a baby boy named Terence, and his uncle blesses him not with greatness but with luck.

Cast[edit]

• Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton
• Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice
• Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett Wilton
• Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett
• Brian Cox as Alec Hewett
• Penelope Wilton as Eleanor Hewett
• Ewen Bremner as Inspector Dowd
• James Nesbitt as Detective Mike Banner
• Rupert Penry-Jones as Henry
• Margaret Tyzack as Mrs. Betty Eastby
• Alexander Armstrong as Mr. Townsend
• Geoffrey Streatfeild as Alan Sinclair
• Miranda Raison as Heather
• Zoe Telford as Samantha
• Rose Keegan as Carol
• Colin Salmon as Ian
• Toby Kebbell as Policeman
• Paul Kaye as Estate Agent
• Steve Pemberton as Detective Parry

Production[edit]

The script was originally set in The Hamptons, a wealthy enclave in New York, but was transferred to London when Allen found financing for the film there.^[4] The film was partly funded by BBC Films, which required that he make the film in the UK with largely local cast and crew. In an interview with The Observer, Allen explained that he was allowed «the same kind of creative liberal attitude that I’m used to», in London. He complained that the American studio system was not interested in making small films: «They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m.»^[5] A further change was required when Kate Winslet, who was supposed to play the part of Nola Rice, resigned a week before filming was scheduled to begin. Scarlett Johansson was offered the part, and accepted, but the character had to be re-written as an American. According to Allen, «It was not a problem…It took about an hour.»^[5]

Filming took place in London in the summer of 2004 over a seven-week schedule.^[5] Some of the city’s landmarks, such as Tate Modern, Norman Foster’s «Gherkin» building at 30 St Mary Axe, Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s building, the Royal Opera House, the Palace of Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, and Cambridge Circus form a backdrop to the film.^[6] The tennis club scenes were filmed at the Queen’s Club.^[5] One of the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus lecture theatres was also used. UK-based graffiti artist Banksy’s Girl With Balloon appears briefly in the film. One of the Parliament View apartments at Lambeth Bridge was used for interiors of Chris and Chloe’s apartment. The restaurant scene was shot at the Covent Garden Hotel.^[7]

Themes[edit]

The film’s opening voiceover from Wilton introduces its themes of chance and fate, which he characterizes as simple luck, to him all-important. The sequence establishes the protagonist as an introvert, a man who mediates his experience of the world through deliberation, and positions the film’s subjective perspective through his narrative eyes. Charalampos Goyios argued that this hero, as an opera lover, maintains a sense of distance from the outer world and that ramifications therein pale in comparison to the purity of interior experience.^[8]

The film is a debate with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which Wilton is seen reading early on, identifying him with the anti-hero Raskolnikov.^[8] That character is a brooding loner who kills two women to prove that he is a superior being, but is racked by guilt and is finally redeemed by confession of his crime, the love of a young woman forced into prostitution, and the discovery of God. Wilton is a brooding loner who kills a poor girl who loves him because he considers his interests superior to those around him, knows little guilt, and avoids detection through luck. Allen signals his intentions with more superficial similarities: both are almost caught by a painter’s unexpected appearance in the stairwell, and both sleuths play cat and mouse with the suspect. Allen argues, unlike Dostoevsky, that there is neither God, nor punishment, nor love to provide redemption. The theme of parody and reversal of Dostoevsky’s motifs and subject matter has been visited by Allen before, in his film Love and Death. In Love and Death, the dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace.^[9] In Match Point, Allen moves the theme from parody to the more direct engagement of Dostoevsky’s motifs and narratives.^[9]

Allen revisits some of the themes he had explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), such as the existence of justice in the universe. Both films feature a murder of an unwanted mistress, and «offer a depressing view on fate, fidelity, and the nature of man».^[10] That film’s protagonist, Judah Rosenthal, is an affluent member of the upper-middle class having an extramarital affair. After he tries to break the affair off, his mistress blackmails him and threatens to go to his wife. Soon, Rosenthal decides to murder his mistress, but is racked with guilt over violating his moral code. Eventually, he learns to ignore his guilt and go on as though nothing has happened. Philip French compared the two films’ plots and themes in The Observer, and characterized Match Point’s as a «clever twist on the themes of chance and fate».^[11]

Money is an important motivator for the characters: both Wilton and Nola come from modest backgrounds and wish to enter the Hewett family using their sex appeal. That family’s secure position is demonstrated by their large country estate, and, early on in their relationships, both prospective spouses are supported by Mr. Hewett, Wilton with a position on «one of his companies» and Nola reports being «swept off her feet» by Hewett’s attention and presents.^[12] Roger Ebert posed the film’s underlying question as «To what degree are we prepared to set aside our moral qualms in order to indulge in greed and selfishness? Wilton is facing a choice between greed and lust, but his sweet wife, Chloe, herself has no qualms about having her father essentially ‘buy’ her husband for her.»^[12]

Jean-Baptiste Morain, writing in Les Inrockuptibles, noticed how the strong do not accept their own weakness and have no qualms about perpetuating an injustice to defend their interests. This wider political sense is, he argued, accentuated by its English setting, where class differences are more marked than in the USA. The film pits passion and the dream of happiness against ambition and arrivisme, resolving the dispute with a pitiless blow that disallows all chance of justice.^[13]

Musical accompaniment[edit]

The film’s soundtrack consists almost entirely of pre-World War I 78 rpm recordings of opera arias sung by the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. This bold use, despite Caruso’s variety of musical styles, constitutes a first for Allen. Opera has been used before in his work as an indicator of social class, such as in Husbands and Wives (1992). In Match Point, the arias and opera extracts make an ironic commentary on the actions of the characters and sometimes foreshadow developments in the movie’s narrative. Furthermore, given Wilton’s status as an introvert and opera enthusiast himself, the accompaniment emphasizes his detachment from his crime.^[8]

The 10-minute murder scene which forms the film’s climax is scored with almost the whole of the Act II duet between Otello and Iago from Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. This is an atypical scoring for a film, since Verdi’s piece is not an aria, but a dramatic dialogue in which the words are as important as the music. Thus the astute spectator will be presented with two dramatic narratives to follow; Allen is not respecting traditional conventions of cinematic accompaniment, since the score’s events do not match the story unfolding onscreen.^[8]

Arias and extracts include work by Verdi (in particular Macbeth, La traviata, Il trovatore and Rigoletto), Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles, and Antônio Carlos Gomes’s Salvator Rosa sung by Caruso. The romanza «Una furtiva lagrima» from L’elisir d’amore is featured repeatedly, including during the opening credits. The Caruso arias are supplemented by diegetic music from contemporary performances that the characters attend over the course of the film. There are scenes at the Royal Opera House and elsewhere performed by opera singers (scenes from La traviata performed by Janis Kelly and Alan Oke, from Rigoletto performed by Mary Hegarty), accompanied by a piano (performed by Tim Lole).^[14]

Reception[edit]

Allen has said that Match Point is one of his few «A-films», and even «arguably may be the best film that I’ve made. This is strictly accidental, it just happened to come out right. You know, I try to make them all good, but some come out and some don’t. With this one everything seemed to come out right. The actors fell in, the photography fell in and the story clicked. I caught a lot of breaks!»^[15]

The film was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.^[16] Match Point broke a streak of box office flops for Allen: it earned $85,306,374 worldwide, of which $23,151,529 was in its North American run.^[3] Allen was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.^[17]

The film received generally strong reviews from critics, particularly in the United States. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 77% based on 216 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website’s critical consensus states: «Woody Allen’s sharpest film in years, Match Point is a taut, philosophical thriller about class and infidelity.»^[18] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 72 out of 100, and thus «generally favorable reviews», based on 40 professional critics.^[19] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars, and considered it among the four best Allen films.^[20] He described it as having a «terrible fascination that lasts all the way through».^[12] Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, calling it Allen’s best of his last half a dozen films, and recommended it even to those who are not fans of the director.^[21]

Reviewers in the United Kingdom were generally less favorable. Philip French, writing in The Observer, criticized Allen’s grasp of British idiom and the film’s lack of humor, especially considering that two comic actors from the UK were cast in minor roles. Also, he called the dialogue «rather lumbering» and said that «the lexicons of neither the City financier nor the London constable are used convincingly.»^[11] Tim Robey, writing in The Daily Telegraph, disdained the claim that the film was Allen’s return to form. Although he acknowledged that the consensus was stronger this time, he called it «as flat-footed a movie as Allen has ever made, a decent idea scuppered by a setting – London – which he treats with the peculiarly tin-eared reverence of a visitor who only thinks he knows his way around.» He called Johansson’s character «the chain-smoking mistress from hell», but said the tennis net analogy has an «unexpectedly crisp payoff» and that the last act was well handled.^[22] Reviewing for the BBC’s website, Andy Jacobs awarded the film four stars out of five, and called it Allen’s best film since Deconstructing Harry (1997). He also criticized some other British reviewers whose dislike, Jacobs stated, was due to the fact that Allen presented an agreeable portrait of middle class life in London. He also praised the performances by Rhys Meyers and Johansson.^[10]

Like many of Allen’s films, Match Point was popular in France: AlloCiné, a cinema information website, gave it a score of 4.4 out of 5, based on a sample of 30 reviews.^[23] In Les Inrockuptibles, a left-wing French cultural magazine, Jean-Baptiste Morain gave the film a strong review, calling it «one of his most accomplished films».^[13] He characterized Allen’s move to London as re-invigorating for him, while recognizing the caricatured portrayal of Britain which made the film less appreciated there than in Allen’s homeland, the United States. Morain called Rhys-Meyers’ and Johansson’s performances «impeccable».^[13]

Match Point has also been the object of scholarship. Joseph Henry Vogel argued the film is exemplary of ecocriticism as an economic school of thought.^[24] Several critics and commentators have compared elements of the film to the central plot of George Stevens’ film A Place in the Sun (1951), but with some characters in reverse positions.^[11][25]

Accolades[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Допустим, весь смазливый контингент мужского пола хочет жениться на богатых («с лица воды не пить»). Девичий контингент, когда страшненький, а замуж невтерпеж, купит первого попавшегося лимитчика («лучше синица в руках»). Родня жены купит квартиру, машину, дачу, устроит зятя на работу («кровь людская – не водица»). За это зять будет послушен всю жизнь («не плюй в колодец»). Правда, если смазливый, начнет втихомолку удовлетворять свою похоть («яйца на сторону, курочку в дом»). Это тоже длится всю жизнь («не вынося сор из избы»). Только не дай бог влипнуть («хорошо смеется тот, кто смеется без последствий»). Тогда все становится полностью ясно («своя рубашка ближе к телу»). Лишь на время возможны варианты войны на уничтожение («хороший индеец – мертвый индеец»). Однако при всех вариантах главное – вовремя смыться («не пойман – не вор»).

Этот вечный безличный фольклор, впитанный каждым ребенком, Вуди Аллен зачем-то сделал реальностью нынешней Англии. То есть понятно, зачем – за «теорией везения». Бывшему теннисисту Крису повезло с пол-пинка устроиться инструктором молодого богатого аристократа Тома. Тот немедленно набивается в лучшие друзья Криса, ведет в собственную ложу, знакомит с родней. Прямо на лондонской дороге валяются дружелюбные аристократы с незамужними сестрами. И еще до свадьбы со страшненькой сестрой Тома Крис трахнет его подружку, и эта похотливая Нола тоже сразу попадется ему под руку, далеко ходить не надо. Единственный фольклорный «несинхрон» – когда Крис женился на страшненькой Клои. Том тогда бросил подружку, неугодную маме, и она ненадолго пропала. Но стоит Крису явиться на какую-то выставку, Нола там тут же мелькнет, немедля вернувшись в Лондон. Живущей в полном отстое, устроившейся в магазин, ей в обеденный перерыв просто некуда больше пойти, кроме как в картинную галерею.

Далее Клои никак не может родить, а Крис, тупо делая карьеру на фирме ее папы, попутно столь же тупо делает Ноле ребенка. Он очень послушен родне, с утра трахает жену в подаренной папой квартире, вечером ходит с ней по ресторанам, все выходные и праздники – на загородной вилле, но в перерывах между переговорами трахает также Нолу в ее закутке, куда та легко успевает добраться из своего магазина. Нола на одну зарплату катается на лондонском такси, Криса только однажды случайно засекли, и он тут же отбрехался. Все постоянно верят любой его брехне, и никаких проблем по части цейтнотов, созвонов или хотя бы сплетен среди подружек жены ни разу не возникает. Крис всегда без исключения оказывается в нужное время в нужном месте, Нола смотрит ему в рот, а Клои – жена идеальная, прямо с медового месяца ведущая себя так, будто они отпраздновали серебряную свадьбу, то есть абсолютно чужие люди. Проблема – только когда глубоко беременная Нола пригрозила позвонить жене, чтобы Крис наконец развелся. Что ж, очередной очевидной брехней он отведет от себя угрозу, а прямо назавтра легко уничтожит улики. И так далее со всеми остановками. Но если фольклор – механика для функций вместо живых людей при игре в поддавки вместо многообразия жизни, то функция в любой реальности может либо попасть налево, либо попасть направо. Аллен решил, что она попадет направо, мы рады за него, но смотреть-то на что?

Слабый интерес к происходящему возникает лишь поначалу, когда быстрота событий намекала на их ехидный пересказ, а итальянские оперные арии за кадром отсчитывали этот пересказ от романтического голоса Карузо. Однако уже к середине быстрота связана не с ехидством, а со стремлением Аллена впихнуть в полтора часа всю возможную механику. На пятой арии Карузо тоже надоедает, даже если текст слов параллелен происходящему. В конце концов, и Гитлер оперу любил, а происходящее все равно тупо. Все персонажи – именно функции. Берут, что дают, бегут, если бьют – исключительно по обстоятельствам. Ни одного проявления свободы воли, ни одного собственного желания, только всеобщая жажда благополучия. Но если функциям на экране довольно безличного благополучия «от сих до сих», какое мне, зрителю, дело до этого? А когда и сам Вуди играет со зрителем в поддавки, на что велите смотреть? Мало, что для иллюстрации своей «теории везения» он выбрал самый примитив, так еще этой ботве все время соломку подстилает. Жизнь лондонской аристократии явно знает лишь с чужих слов. Если в «родных» его фильмах, от «Сентября» /September/ (1987) до «Знаменитости» /Celebrity/ (1998), при любых сюжетных натяжках была масса смешных подробностей, съемочных тонкостей, остроумных реплик, мир «Матч Пойнта» ровней доски. Что Лондон, что Париж, что Скарлетт Йоханссон, что Кира Найтли – все едино. Роль теннисиста – с дыркой для головы Джонатана Риз-Мейерса, Дугрэя Скотта, Дэниэла Крэйга. Теннисист в жизни одну книжку прочитал, и ту – не до конца. И опять «Преступление и наказание», от навязчивости которого кинематограф скоро вырвет.

Сам «Матч Пойнт» ровно такой же умеренный и аккуратный, как его персонажи-функции. Начат «открытием» теннисиста: «Человек, который говорит: «Лучше быть везучим, чем добрым», глубоко понимает суть жизни. Люди боятся принять тот факт, что жизнь во многом зависит от везения». Кончен тем же, и, закольцевав «открытие», сказать Аллену больше нечего. Только какое же это открытие, если весь мировой фольклор вечно твердит: «От добра добра не ищут»? Когда вы в последний раз видели человека, сказавшего: «Лучше быть добрым, чем везучим»? Какая сатира? «Сатиры!!! Пиастры!!!». Кто знает, как сдох попугай капитана Флинта, которого заперли в пустой каюте? Даже Гоголь, сочиняя Чичикова, придумал ему спекуляцию мертвыми душами, и даже после Стендаля, Теккерея, Драйзера, «Двойной страховки» /Double Indemnity/ (1944), «Фотоувеличения» /Blowup/ (1966), «Скромного обаяния буржуазии» /Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Le/ (1972) Вуди Аллен не придумал ничего.

Если бы теннисисту «не повезло» и его «наказали», кино было бы то же самое: ноль индивидуальности, минус впечатлений, вид из окна и то интересней.

Match Point
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by	Woody Allen
Written by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Letty Aronson Gareth Wiley Lucy Darwin
Starring	Brian Cox Matthew Goode Scarlett Johansson Emily Mortimer Jonathan Rhys Meyers Penelope Wilton
Cinematography	Remi Adefarasin
Edited by	Alisa Lepselter
Production companies	DreamWorks Pictures BBC Films Thema Production Jada Productions
Distributed by	Icon Film Distribution (United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) DreamWorks Pictures (North America)
Release dates	12 May 2005 (Cannes) 6 January 2006 (United Kingdom) 20 January 2006 (United States)
Running time	124 minutes[1]
Countries	United Kingdom[2] United States[2] Luxembourg[2]
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$85.3 million[3]

Match Point is a 2005 psychological thriller film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, and Penelope Wilton. In the film, Rhys Meyers’ character marries into a wealthy family, but his social position is threatened by his affair with his brother-in-law’s girlfriend, played by Scarlett Johansson. The film deals with themes of morality and greed, and explores the roles of lust, money, and luck in life, leading many to compare it to Allen’s earlier film Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). It was produced and filmed in London after Allen had difficulty finding financial support for the film in New York. The agreement obliged him to make it there using a cast and crew mostly from the United Kingdom. Allen quickly re-wrote the script, which was originally set in New York, for a British setting.

Critics in the United States praised the film and its British setting, and welcomed it as a return to form for Allen. In contrast, reviewers from the United Kingdom treated Match Point less favorably, finding fault with the locations and especially the British idiom in the dialogues. Allen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Plot[edit]

Chris Wilton, a recently retired tennis professional from Ireland, is taken on as an instructor at an upmarket club in London. He strikes up a friendship with a wealthy pupil, Tom Hewett, after discovering their common affinity for opera. Tom’s older sister, Chloe, is smitten with Chris, and the two begin dating. During a family gathering, Chris meets Tom’s American fiancée, Nola Rice, and they are instantly attracted to each other. Tom’s mother, Eleanor, does not approve of her son’s relationship with Nola, a struggling actress. This is a source of tension in the family. Chloe persuades her father, Alec, to give Chris a job as an executive in one of his companies. Alec does so, and Chris begins to be accepted into the family, and marriage is discussed.

One afternoon, Nola’s choice of profession is questioned by Eleanor, and Nola leaves the house in anger during a rainstorm. Chris follows Nola outside and confesses his feelings for her, and they passionately have sex in a wheat field. Feeling guilty, Nola treats this as an accident. Chris, however, wants an ongoing clandestine relationship. Chris and Chloe marry, while Tom ends his relationship with Nola.

Chloe, to her distress, does not become pregnant immediately. Chris vainly tries to track down Nola, but meets her by chance sometime later at Tate Modern. He discreetly asks for her number, and they begin an affair. While Chris is spending time with his wife’s family, Nola calls to inform him that she is pregnant. Panicked, Chris asks her to get an abortion, but she refuses, saying that she wants to raise the child with him. Chris becomes distant from Chloe, who suspects he is having an affair, which he denies. Nola urges Chris to divorce his wife, and he feels trapped and finds himself lying to Chloe as well as to Nola. Nola confronts him on the street outside his apartment and he just barely escapes public detection.

Soon afterwards, Chris takes a shotgun from his father-in-law’s home and carries it to his office in a tennis bag. After leaving the office, he calls Nola on her mobile to tell her he has good news for her. He goes to Nola’s building and gains entry into the apartment of her neighbor, Mrs. Eastby, whom he shoots and kills and then stages a burglary by ransacking the rooms and stealing jewelry and drugs. As Nola returns, he shoots her in the stairwell. Chris then takes a taxi to the theater to watch a musical with Chloe. Scotland Yard investigates the crime and concludes it was likely committed by a drug addict stealing money. The following day, as the murder is in the news, Chris returns the shotgun and he and Chloe announce that she is pregnant.

Detective Mike Banner invites Chris for an interview in relation to the murder. Before he goes in to see the detectives, Chris throws Mrs. Eastby’s jewelry and drugs into the river, but by chance her ring bounces on the railing and falls to the pavement. This imagery ties in to the opening scene when a tennis ball hits the net, but bounces back, and the narrator (Chris) says, «The man who said, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good,’ saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.»

At the police station, Chris lies about his relationship with Nola, but Banner surprises him with her diary, in which he is featured extensively. He confesses his affair but denies any link to the murder, and appeals to the detectives not to involve him further in their investigation as news of the affair may end his marriage just as he and his wife are expecting a baby.

One night, Chris sees apparitions of Nola and Mrs. Eastby, who tell him to be ready for the consequences of his actions. He replies that his crimes, though wrong, had been «necessary», and that he is able to suppress his guilt. The same night, Banner dreams that Chris committed the murders.

The next morning, however, his theory is discredited by his partner, Dowd, who informs him that a drug addict found murdered on the streets had Mrs. Eastby’s ring in his pocket. Banner and Dowd consider the case closed and abandon any further investigation. Chloe gives birth to a baby boy named Terence, and his uncle blesses him not with greatness but with luck.

Cast[edit]

• Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton
• Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice
• Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett Wilton
• Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett
• Brian Cox as Alec Hewett
• Penelope Wilton as Eleanor Hewett
• Ewen Bremner as Inspector Dowd
• James Nesbitt as Detective Mike Banner
• Rupert Penry-Jones as Henry
• Margaret Tyzack as Mrs. Betty Eastby
• Alexander Armstrong as Mr. Townsend
• Geoffrey Streatfeild as Alan Sinclair
• Miranda Raison as Heather
• Zoe Telford as Samantha
• Rose Keegan as Carol
• Colin Salmon as Ian
• Toby Kebbell as Policeman
• Paul Kaye as Estate Agent
• Steve Pemberton as Detective Parry

Production[edit]

The script was originally set in The Hamptons, a wealthy enclave in New York, but was transferred to London when Allen found financing for the film there.^[4] The film was partly funded by BBC Films, which required that he make the film in the UK with largely local cast and crew. In an interview with The Observer, Allen explained that he was allowed «the same kind of creative liberal attitude that I’m used to», in London. He complained that the American studio system was not interested in making small films: «They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m.»^[5] A further change was required when Kate Winslet, who was supposed to play the part of Nola Rice, resigned a week before filming was scheduled to begin. Scarlett Johansson was offered the part, and accepted, but the character had to be re-written as an American. According to Allen, «It was not a problem…It took about an hour.»^[5]

Filming took place in London in the summer of 2004 over a seven-week schedule.^[5] Some of the city’s landmarks, such as Tate Modern, Norman Foster’s «Gherkin» building at 30 St Mary Axe, Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s building, the Royal Opera House, the Palace of Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, and Cambridge Circus form a backdrop to the film.^[6] The tennis club scenes were filmed at the Queen’s Club.^[5] One of the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus lecture theatres was also used. UK-based graffiti artist Banksy’s Girl With Balloon appears briefly in the film. One of the Parliament View apartments at Lambeth Bridge was used for interiors of Chris and Chloe’s apartment. The restaurant scene was shot at the Covent Garden Hotel.^[7]

Themes[edit]

The film’s opening voiceover from Wilton introduces its themes of chance and fate, which he characterizes as simple luck, to him all-important. The sequence establishes the protagonist as an introvert, a man who mediates his experience of the world through deliberation, and positions the film’s subjective perspective through his narrative eyes. Charalampos Goyios argued that this hero, as an opera lover, maintains a sense of distance from the outer world and that ramifications therein pale in comparison to the purity of interior experience.^[8]

The film is a debate with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which Wilton is seen reading early on, identifying him with the anti-hero Raskolnikov.^[8] That character is a brooding loner who kills two women to prove that he is a superior being, but is racked by guilt and is finally redeemed by confession of his crime, the love of a young woman forced into prostitution, and the discovery of God. Wilton is a brooding loner who kills a poor girl who loves him because he considers his interests superior to those around him, knows little guilt, and avoids detection through luck. Allen signals his intentions with more superficial similarities: both are almost caught by a painter’s unexpected appearance in the stairwell, and both sleuths play cat and mouse with the suspect. Allen argues, unlike Dostoevsky, that there is neither God, nor punishment, nor love to provide redemption. The theme of parody and reversal of Dostoevsky’s motifs and subject matter has been visited by Allen before, in his film Love and Death. In Love and Death, the dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace.^[9] In Match Point, Allen moves the theme from parody to the more direct engagement of Dostoevsky’s motifs and narratives.^[9]

Allen revisits some of the themes he had explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), such as the existence of justice in the universe. Both films feature a murder of an unwanted mistress, and «offer a depressing view on fate, fidelity, and the nature of man».^[10] That film’s protagonist, Judah Rosenthal, is an affluent member of the upper-middle class having an extramarital affair. After he tries to break the affair off, his mistress blackmails him and threatens to go to his wife. Soon, Rosenthal decides to murder his mistress, but is racked with guilt over violating his moral code. Eventually, he learns to ignore his guilt and go on as though nothing has happened. Philip French compared the two films’ plots and themes in The Observer, and characterized Match Point’s as a «clever twist on the themes of chance and fate».^[11]

Money is an important motivator for the characters: both Wilton and Nola come from modest backgrounds and wish to enter the Hewett family using their sex appeal. That family’s secure position is demonstrated by their large country estate, and, early on in their relationships, both prospective spouses are supported by Mr. Hewett, Wilton with a position on «one of his companies» and Nola reports being «swept off her feet» by Hewett’s attention and presents.^[12] Roger Ebert posed the film’s underlying question as «To what degree are we prepared to set aside our moral qualms in order to indulge in greed and selfishness? Wilton is facing a choice between greed and lust, but his sweet wife, Chloe, herself has no qualms about having her father essentially ‘buy’ her husband for her.»^[12]

Jean-Baptiste Morain, writing in Les Inrockuptibles, noticed how the strong do not accept their own weakness and have no qualms about perpetuating an injustice to defend their interests. This wider political sense is, he argued, accentuated by its English setting, where class differences are more marked than in the USA. The film pits passion and the dream of happiness against ambition and arrivisme, resolving the dispute with a pitiless blow that disallows all chance of justice.^[13]

Musical accompaniment[edit]

The film’s soundtrack consists almost entirely of pre-World War I 78 rpm recordings of opera arias sung by the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. This bold use, despite Caruso’s variety of musical styles, constitutes a first for Allen. Opera has been used before in his work as an indicator of social class, such as in Husbands and Wives (1992). In Match Point, the arias and opera extracts make an ironic commentary on the actions of the characters and sometimes foreshadow developments in the movie’s narrative. Furthermore, given Wilton’s status as an introvert and opera enthusiast himself, the accompaniment emphasizes his detachment from his crime.^[8]

The 10-minute murder scene which forms the film’s climax is scored with almost the whole of the Act II duet between Otello and Iago from Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. This is an atypical scoring for a film, since Verdi’s piece is not an aria, but a dramatic dialogue in which the words are as important as the music. Thus the astute spectator will be presented with two dramatic narratives to follow; Allen is not respecting traditional conventions of cinematic accompaniment, since the score’s events do not match the story unfolding onscreen.^[8]

Arias and extracts include work by Verdi (in particular Macbeth, La traviata, Il trovatore and Rigoletto), Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles, and Antônio Carlos Gomes’s Salvator Rosa sung by Caruso. The romanza «Una furtiva lagrima» from L’elisir d’amore is featured repeatedly, including during the opening credits. The Caruso arias are supplemented by diegetic music from contemporary performances that the characters attend over the course of the film. There are scenes at the Royal Opera House and elsewhere performed by opera singers (scenes from La traviata performed by Janis Kelly and Alan Oke, from Rigoletto performed by Mary Hegarty), accompanied by a piano (performed by Tim Lole).^[14]

Reception[edit]

Allen has said that Match Point is one of his few «A-films», and even «arguably may be the best film that I’ve made. This is strictly accidental, it just happened to come out right. You know, I try to make them all good, but some come out and some don’t. With this one everything seemed to come out right. The actors fell in, the photography fell in and the story clicked. I caught a lot of breaks!»^[15]

The film was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.^[16] Match Point broke a streak of box office flops for Allen: it earned $85,306,374 worldwide, of which $23,151,529 was in its North American run.^[3] Allen was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.^[17]

The film received generally strong reviews from critics, particularly in the United States. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 77% based on 216 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website’s critical consensus states: «Woody Allen’s sharpest film in years, Match Point is a taut, philosophical thriller about class and infidelity.»^[18] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 72 out of 100, and thus «generally favorable reviews», based on 40 professional critics.^[19] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars, and considered it among the four best Allen films.^[20] He described it as having a «terrible fascination that lasts all the way through».^[12] Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, calling it Allen’s best of his last half a dozen films, and recommended it even to those who are not fans of the director.^[21]

Reviewers in the United Kingdom were generally less favorable. Philip French, writing in The Observer, criticized Allen’s grasp of British idiom and the film’s lack of humor, especially considering that two comic actors from the UK were cast in minor roles. Also, he called the dialogue «rather lumbering» and said that «the lexicons of neither the City financier nor the London constable are used convincingly.»^[11] Tim Robey, writing in The Daily Telegraph, disdained the claim that the film was Allen’s return to form. Although he acknowledged that the consensus was stronger this time, he called it «as flat-footed a movie as Allen has ever made, a decent idea scuppered by a setting – London – which he treats with the peculiarly tin-eared reverence of a visitor who only thinks he knows his way around.» He called Johansson’s character «the chain-smoking mistress from hell», but said the tennis net analogy has an «unexpectedly crisp payoff» and that the last act was well handled.^[22] Reviewing for the BBC’s website, Andy Jacobs awarded the film four stars out of five, and called it Allen’s best film since Deconstructing Harry (1997). He also criticized some other British reviewers whose dislike, Jacobs stated, was due to the fact that Allen presented an agreeable portrait of middle class life in London. He also praised the performances by Rhys Meyers and Johansson.^[10]

Like many of Allen’s films, Match Point was popular in France: AlloCiné, a cinema information website, gave it a score of 4.4 out of 5, based on a sample of 30 reviews.^[23] In Les Inrockuptibles, a left-wing French cultural magazine, Jean-Baptiste Morain gave the film a strong review, calling it «one of his most accomplished films».^[13] He characterized Allen’s move to London as re-invigorating for him, while recognizing the caricatured portrayal of Britain which made the film less appreciated there than in Allen’s homeland, the United States. Morain called Rhys-Meyers’ and Johansson’s performances «impeccable».^[13]

Match Point has also been the object of scholarship. Joseph Henry Vogel argued the film is exemplary of ecocriticism as an economic school of thought.^[24] Several critics and commentators have compared elements of the film to the central plot of George Stevens’ film A Place in the Sun (1951), but with some characters in reverse positions.^[11][25]

Accolades[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Match Point
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by	Woody Allen
Written by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Letty Aronson Gareth Wiley Lucy Darwin
Starring	Brian Cox Matthew Goode Scarlett Johansson Emily Mortimer Jonathan Rhys Meyers Penelope Wilton
Cinematography	Remi Adefarasin
Edited by	Alisa Lepselter
Production companies	DreamWorks Pictures BBC Films Thema Production Jada Productions
Distributed by	Icon Film Distribution (United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) DreamWorks Pictures (North America)
Release dates	12 May 2005 (Cannes) 6 January 2006 (United Kingdom) 20 January 2006 (United States)
Running time	124 minutes[1]
Countries	United Kingdom[2] United States[2] Luxembourg[2]
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$85.3 million[3]

Match Point is a 2005 psychological thriller film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, and Penelope Wilton. In the film, Rhys Meyers’ character marries into a wealthy family, but his social position is threatened by his affair with his brother-in-law’s girlfriend, played by Scarlett Johansson. The film deals with themes of morality and greed, and explores the roles of lust, money, and luck in life, leading many to compare it to Allen’s earlier film Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). It was produced and filmed in London after Allen had difficulty finding financial support for the film in New York. The agreement obliged him to make it there using a cast and crew mostly from the United Kingdom. Allen quickly re-wrote the script, which was originally set in New York, for a British setting.

Critics in the United States praised the film and its British setting, and welcomed it as a return to form for Allen. In contrast, reviewers from the United Kingdom treated Match Point less favorably, finding fault with the locations and especially the British idiom in the dialogues. Allen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Plot[edit]

Chris Wilton, a recently retired tennis professional from Ireland, is taken on as an instructor at an upmarket club in London. He strikes up a friendship with a wealthy pupil, Tom Hewett, after discovering their common affinity for opera. Tom’s older sister, Chloe, is smitten with Chris, and the two begin dating. During a family gathering, Chris meets Tom’s American fiancée, Nola Rice, and they are instantly attracted to each other. Tom’s mother, Eleanor, does not approve of her son’s relationship with Nola, a struggling actress. This is a source of tension in the family. Chloe persuades her father, Alec, to give Chris a job as an executive in one of his companies. Alec does so, and Chris begins to be accepted into the family, and marriage is discussed.

One afternoon, Nola’s choice of profession is questioned by Eleanor, and Nola leaves the house in anger during a rainstorm. Chris follows Nola outside and confesses his feelings for her, and they passionately have sex in a wheat field. Feeling guilty, Nola treats this as an accident. Chris, however, wants an ongoing clandestine relationship. Chris and Chloe marry, while Tom ends his relationship with Nola.

Chloe, to her distress, does not become pregnant immediately. Chris vainly tries to track down Nola, but meets her by chance sometime later at Tate Modern. He discreetly asks for her number, and they begin an affair. While Chris is spending time with his wife’s family, Nola calls to inform him that she is pregnant. Panicked, Chris asks her to get an abortion, but she refuses, saying that she wants to raise the child with him. Chris becomes distant from Chloe, who suspects he is having an affair, which he denies. Nola urges Chris to divorce his wife, and he feels trapped and finds himself lying to Chloe as well as to Nola. Nola confronts him on the street outside his apartment and he just barely escapes public detection.

Soon afterwards, Chris takes a shotgun from his father-in-law’s home and carries it to his office in a tennis bag. After leaving the office, he calls Nola on her mobile to tell her he has good news for her. He goes to Nola’s building and gains entry into the apartment of her neighbor, Mrs. Eastby, whom he shoots and kills and then stages a burglary by ransacking the rooms and stealing jewelry and drugs. As Nola returns, he shoots her in the stairwell. Chris then takes a taxi to the theater to watch a musical with Chloe. Scotland Yard investigates the crime and concludes it was likely committed by a drug addict stealing money. The following day, as the murder is in the news, Chris returns the shotgun and he and Chloe announce that she is pregnant.

Detective Mike Banner invites Chris for an interview in relation to the murder. Before he goes in to see the detectives, Chris throws Mrs. Eastby’s jewelry and drugs into the river, but by chance her ring bounces on the railing and falls to the pavement. This imagery ties in to the opening scene when a tennis ball hits the net, but bounces back, and the narrator (Chris) says, «The man who said, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good,’ saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.»

At the police station, Chris lies about his relationship with Nola, but Banner surprises him with her diary, in which he is featured extensively. He confesses his affair but denies any link to the murder, and appeals to the detectives not to involve him further in their investigation as news of the affair may end his marriage just as he and his wife are expecting a baby.

One night, Chris sees apparitions of Nola and Mrs. Eastby, who tell him to be ready for the consequences of his actions. He replies that his crimes, though wrong, had been «necessary», and that he is able to suppress his guilt. The same night, Banner dreams that Chris committed the murders.

The next morning, however, his theory is discredited by his partner, Dowd, who informs him that a drug addict found murdered on the streets had Mrs. Eastby’s ring in his pocket. Banner and Dowd consider the case closed and abandon any further investigation. Chloe gives birth to a baby boy named Terence, and his uncle blesses him not with greatness but with luck.

Cast[edit]

• Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton
• Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice
• Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett Wilton
• Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett
• Brian Cox as Alec Hewett
• Penelope Wilton as Eleanor Hewett
• Ewen Bremner as Inspector Dowd
• James Nesbitt as Detective Mike Banner
• Rupert Penry-Jones as Henry
• Margaret Tyzack as Mrs. Betty Eastby
• Alexander Armstrong as Mr. Townsend
• Geoffrey Streatfeild as Alan Sinclair
• Miranda Raison as Heather
• Zoe Telford as Samantha
• Rose Keegan as Carol
• Colin Salmon as Ian
• Toby Kebbell as Policeman
• Paul Kaye as Estate Agent
• Steve Pemberton as Detective Parry

Production[edit]

The script was originally set in The Hamptons, a wealthy enclave in New York, but was transferred to London when Allen found financing for the film there.^[4] The film was partly funded by BBC Films, which required that he make the film in the UK with largely local cast and crew. In an interview with The Observer, Allen explained that he was allowed «the same kind of creative liberal attitude that I’m used to», in London. He complained that the American studio system was not interested in making small films: «They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m.»^[5] A further change was required when Kate Winslet, who was supposed to play the part of Nola Rice, resigned a week before filming was scheduled to begin. Scarlett Johansson was offered the part, and accepted, but the character had to be re-written as an American. According to Allen, «It was not a problem…It took about an hour.»^[5]

Filming took place in London in the summer of 2004 over a seven-week schedule.^[5] Some of the city’s landmarks, such as Tate Modern, Norman Foster’s «Gherkin» building at 30 St Mary Axe, Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s building, the Royal Opera House, the Palace of Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, and Cambridge Circus form a backdrop to the film.^[6] The tennis club scenes were filmed at the Queen’s Club.^[5] One of the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus lecture theatres was also used. UK-based graffiti artist Banksy’s Girl With Balloon appears briefly in the film. One of the Parliament View apartments at Lambeth Bridge was used for interiors of Chris and Chloe’s apartment. The restaurant scene was shot at the Covent Garden Hotel.^[7]

Themes[edit]

The film’s opening voiceover from Wilton introduces its themes of chance and fate, which he characterizes as simple luck, to him all-important. The sequence establishes the protagonist as an introvert, a man who mediates his experience of the world through deliberation, and positions the film’s subjective perspective through his narrative eyes. Charalampos Goyios argued that this hero, as an opera lover, maintains a sense of distance from the outer world and that ramifications therein pale in comparison to the purity of interior experience.^[8]

The film is a debate with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which Wilton is seen reading early on, identifying him with the anti-hero Raskolnikov.^[8] That character is a brooding loner who kills two women to prove that he is a superior being, but is racked by guilt and is finally redeemed by confession of his crime, the love of a young woman forced into prostitution, and the discovery of God. Wilton is a brooding loner who kills a poor girl who loves him because he considers his interests superior to those around him, knows little guilt, and avoids detection through luck. Allen signals his intentions with more superficial similarities: both are almost caught by a painter’s unexpected appearance in the stairwell, and both sleuths play cat and mouse with the suspect. Allen argues, unlike Dostoevsky, that there is neither God, nor punishment, nor love to provide redemption. The theme of parody and reversal of Dostoevsky’s motifs and subject matter has been visited by Allen before, in his film Love and Death. In Love and Death, the dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace.^[9] In Match Point, Allen moves the theme from parody to the more direct engagement of Dostoevsky’s motifs and narratives.^[9]

Allen revisits some of the themes he had explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), such as the existence of justice in the universe. Both films feature a murder of an unwanted mistress, and «offer a depressing view on fate, fidelity, and the nature of man».^[10] That film’s protagonist, Judah Rosenthal, is an affluent member of the upper-middle class having an extramarital affair. After he tries to break the affair off, his mistress blackmails him and threatens to go to his wife. Soon, Rosenthal decides to murder his mistress, but is racked with guilt over violating his moral code. Eventually, he learns to ignore his guilt and go on as though nothing has happened. Philip French compared the two films’ plots and themes in The Observer, and characterized Match Point’s as a «clever twist on the themes of chance and fate».^[11]

Money is an important motivator for the characters: both Wilton and Nola come from modest backgrounds and wish to enter the Hewett family using their sex appeal. That family’s secure position is demonstrated by their large country estate, and, early on in their relationships, both prospective spouses are supported by Mr. Hewett, Wilton with a position on «one of his companies» and Nola reports being «swept off her feet» by Hewett’s attention and presents.^[12] Roger Ebert posed the film’s underlying question as «To what degree are we prepared to set aside our moral qualms in order to indulge in greed and selfishness? Wilton is facing a choice between greed and lust, but his sweet wife, Chloe, herself has no qualms about having her father essentially ‘buy’ her husband for her.»^[12]

Jean-Baptiste Morain, writing in Les Inrockuptibles, noticed how the strong do not accept their own weakness and have no qualms about perpetuating an injustice to defend their interests. This wider political sense is, he argued, accentuated by its English setting, where class differences are more marked than in the USA. The film pits passion and the dream of happiness against ambition and arrivisme, resolving the dispute with a pitiless blow that disallows all chance of justice.^[13]

Musical accompaniment[edit]

The film’s soundtrack consists almost entirely of pre-World War I 78 rpm recordings of opera arias sung by the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. This bold use, despite Caruso’s variety of musical styles, constitutes a first for Allen. Opera has been used before in his work as an indicator of social class, such as in Husbands and Wives (1992). In Match Point, the arias and opera extracts make an ironic commentary on the actions of the characters and sometimes foreshadow developments in the movie’s narrative. Furthermore, given Wilton’s status as an introvert and opera enthusiast himself, the accompaniment emphasizes his detachment from his crime.^[8]

The 10-minute murder scene which forms the film’s climax is scored with almost the whole of the Act II duet between Otello and Iago from Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. This is an atypical scoring for a film, since Verdi’s piece is not an aria, but a dramatic dialogue in which the words are as important as the music. Thus the astute spectator will be presented with two dramatic narratives to follow; Allen is not respecting traditional conventions of cinematic accompaniment, since the score’s events do not match the story unfolding onscreen.^[8]

Arias and extracts include work by Verdi (in particular Macbeth, La traviata, Il trovatore and Rigoletto), Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles, and Antônio Carlos Gomes’s Salvator Rosa sung by Caruso. The romanza «Una furtiva lagrima» from L’elisir d’amore is featured repeatedly, including during the opening credits. The Caruso arias are supplemented by diegetic music from contemporary performances that the characters attend over the course of the film. There are scenes at the Royal Opera House and elsewhere performed by opera singers (scenes from La traviata performed by Janis Kelly and Alan Oke, from Rigoletto performed by Mary Hegarty), accompanied by a piano (performed by Tim Lole).^[14]

Reception[edit]

Allen has said that Match Point is one of his few «A-films», and even «arguably may be the best film that I’ve made. This is strictly accidental, it just happened to come out right. You know, I try to make them all good, but some come out and some don’t. With this one everything seemed to come out right. The actors fell in, the photography fell in and the story clicked. I caught a lot of breaks!»^[15]

The film was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.^[16] Match Point broke a streak of box office flops for Allen: it earned $85,306,374 worldwide, of which $23,151,529 was in its North American run.^[3] Allen was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.^[17]

The film received generally strong reviews from critics, particularly in the United States. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 77% based on 216 reviews with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website’s critical consensus states: «Woody Allen’s sharpest film in years, Match Point is a taut, philosophical thriller about class and infidelity.»^[18] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 72 out of 100, and thus «generally favorable reviews», based on 40 professional critics.^[19] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars, and considered it among the four best Allen films.^[20] He described it as having a «terrible fascination that lasts all the way through».^[12] Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, calling it Allen’s best of his last half a dozen films, and recommended it even to those who are not fans of the director.^[21]

Reviewers in the United Kingdom were generally less favorable. Philip French, writing in The Observer, criticized Allen’s grasp of British idiom and the film’s lack of humor, especially considering that two comic actors from the UK were cast in minor roles. Also, he called the dialogue «rather lumbering» and said that «the lexicons of neither the City financier nor the London constable are used convincingly.»^[11] Tim Robey, writing in The Daily Telegraph, disdained the claim that the film was Allen’s return to form. Although he acknowledged that the consensus was stronger this time, he called it «as flat-footed a movie as Allen has ever made, a decent idea scuppered by a setting – London – which he treats with the peculiarly tin-eared reverence of a visitor who only thinks he knows his way around.» He called Johansson’s character «the chain-smoking mistress from hell», but said the tennis net analogy has an «unexpectedly crisp payoff» and that the last act was well handled.^[22] Reviewing for the BBC’s website, Andy Jacobs awarded the film four stars out of five, and called it Allen’s best film since Deconstructing Harry (1997). He also criticized some other British reviewers whose dislike, Jacobs stated, was due to the fact that Allen presented an agreeable portrait of middle class life in London. He also praised the performances by Rhys Meyers and Johansson.^[10]

Like many of Allen’s films, Match Point was popular in France: AlloCiné, a cinema information website, gave it a score of 4.4 out of 5, based on a sample of 30 reviews.^[23] In Les Inrockuptibles, a left-wing French cultural magazine, Jean-Baptiste Morain gave the film a strong review, calling it «one of his most accomplished films».^[13] He characterized Allen’s move to London as re-invigorating for him, while recognizing the caricatured portrayal of Britain which made the film less appreciated there than in Allen’s homeland, the United States. Morain called Rhys-Meyers’ and Johansson’s performances «impeccable».^[13]

Match Point has also been the object of scholarship. Joseph Henry Vogel argued the film is exemplary of ecocriticism as an economic school of thought.^[24] Several critics and commentators have compared elements of the film to the central plot of George Stevens’ film A Place in the Sun (1951), but with some characters in reverse positions.^[11][25]

Accolades[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

У этого термина существуют и другие значения, см. Матч-пойнт.

Матч-пойнт
Match point
Жанр	драма / триллер
Режиссёр	Вуди Аллен
Продюсер	Летти Аронсон Гарет Уайли
Автор сценария	Вуди Аллен
В главных ролях	Скарлетт Йоханссон Джонатан Рис-Майерс Мэттью Гуд Эмили Мортимер
Оператор	Реми Адефарасин
Кинокомпания	BBC Films Thema Production
Длительность	124 мин.
Бюджет	15 млн. $
Страна	Великобритания
Год	2005
IMDb	ID 0416320

«Матч-пойнт» (англ. Match Point) — драматический триллер Вуди Аллена 2005 года о бывшем теннисисте-профессионале Крисе Уилтоне, который после знакомства с семьёй богатых аристократов Хьюитов начинает делать быструю карьеру в высшем британском обществе. Номинировался на «Оскар» в 2006 году в категории лучший оригинальный сценарий, однако проиграл фильму «Столкновение».

Сюжет

Фильм открывается закадровым голосом ключевого персонажа фильма — тренера Криса Уилтона.

Одновременно показывается игра в теннис. Мячик, ударившись о верхний край сетки, взмывает вертикально вверх. Кто победит, зависит от того, на какой половине поля упадёт мяч.

Действие происходит в Англии. Крис Уилтон (Джонатан Рис-Майерс), понимая, что не станет успешным профессиональным игроком в теннис, устраивается тренером в эксклюзивном английском спортивном клубе. Он знакомится с Томом Хьюитом, молодым человеком из весьма богатой семьи. При этом он начинает роман с сестрой Тома, Хлоей, знакомится с его родителями и флиртует с его невестой, безработной актрисой Нолой Райс (Йоханссон). Через некоторое время Крис женится на Хлое и становится преуспевающим бизнесменом, получив хорошую высокооплачиваемую работу в фирме её отца. Нола отдается ему в бескрайних английских лугах, но после этого отказывается продолжать роман с Крисом. Любовь к Ноле превращается у Криса в одержимость.

Вскоре после этого Хьюит расстаётся с Нолой, но Крису это не помогает: Нола меняет телефон и уезжает. Однако Крис случайно встречает её на выставке. Нола соглашается дать ему телефон. Между ними начинается бурный роман, а Хлоя, кроткая и любящая жена, интересует Криса всё меньше и меньше. Хлоя пытается, но не может забеременеть, и секс между ней и её мужем превращается в рутину, в медицинскую процедуру.

Нола беременеет и наотрез отказывается делать аборт. Крис обещает рассказать обо всём Хлое и развестись с ней, хотя такой развод будет для него крахом карьеры: отец Хлои вышвырнет его с работы. Однако он не может собраться с духом, чтобы нанести наивной Хлое такой удар, и тянет с объяснением. Постепенно Крис начинает жалеть о своём опрометчивом обещании. Нола всё жёстче давит на него, угрожая самой рассказать Хлое об их романе и обвиняя Криса в том, что он водит её за нос. Крис не знает как отделаться от Нолы.

Крис берёт охотничье ружье своего тестя, проникает в квартиру к пожилой соседке Нолы, убивает её и инсценирует ограбление, похищая деньги, драгоценности и лекарства. После этого он ждет, когда на лестничной площадке появится Нола и убивает её, чтобы убийство Нолы выглядело как убийство случайного свидетеля. После этого он избавляется от похищенных вещей, выбросив их в реку. Однако обручальное кольцо пожилой дамы, ударившись о перила подобно мячику в начале фильма, падает на асфальт.

На следующий день после убийства Хлоя узнает о своей беременности и сообщает это родителям и Крису. В это же время раздается звонок от детектива, расследующего дело: Криса просят появиться в полицейском участке. По мнению Криса, полиция сочтёт, что какой-то наркоман убил соседку Нолы с целью ограбления, а потом и Нолу как случайную свидетельницу. В действительности полиция обнаруживает дневник Нолы и начинает подозревать Криса. Через несколько дней после убийства следователю, ведущему дело об убийстве, снится сон, в котором он видит Криса, Нолу и ее соседку.

Спасает Криса случайность: через несколько дней после того, как он убил Нолу, в районе происходит ещё одно убийство: застрелен наркоман, и у него в кармане находят кольцо из квартиры соседки Нолы, убитой Крисом. Таким образом, убийство Нолы и её соседки однозначно приписывается наркоману.

Последняя сцена — Хлоя приносит из родильного дома новорожденного младенца, в семье Криса праздник, но Крис не участвует в нём, а стоит и смотрит в окно.

В ролях

Интересные факты

• Это самый длинный фильм Аллена (его продолжительность 124 минуты).
• Приглашение на роль Нолы Райс первоначально получила Кейт Уинслет, но была вынуждена отказаться, чтобы провести больше времени с семьёй. Нола Райс по сценарию была англичанкой, но после того, как на эту роль утвердили Скарлетт Йоханссон, сценарий был откорректирован, и Нола стала американкой.
• Премьера фильма состоялась на Каннском кинофестивале 2005 года.
• В начале фильма Крис Уилтон читает «Преступление и наказание» Фёдора Достоевского (одна из сюжетных линий романа — убийство старухи и беременной женщины), а вскоре после знакомства с Нолой Райс — Августа Стриндберга.
• Сюжет фильма перекликается с сюжетом романа Теодора Драйзера «Американская трагедия» (1925).
• В одной из сцен фильма герои отправляются в кинотеатр на картину Уолтера Саллеса «Дневники мотоциклиста» (исп. Diarios de Motocicleta) о молодом Че Геваре.
• В фильме звучит музыка Жоржа Бизе, Гаэтано Доницетти, Джузеппе Верди, Джоаккино Россини, Эндрю Ллойда Уэббера и Карлоса Гомеса. Большинство сцен сопровождается оперными ариями.
• Сам Вуди Аллен считает своими лучшими фильмами «Пурпурная роза Каира» (1985), «Воспоминания о звёздной пыли» (1980) и этот^[1].

Примечания

Ссылки

• Официальный сайт фильма (англ.)
• Матч-пойнт  (англ.) на сайте Internet Movie Database

Фильмы Вуди Аллена

Что случилось, тигровая лилия? (1966) • Хватай деньги и беги (1969) • Бананы (1971) • Всё, что вы всегда хотели знать о сексе, но боялись спросить (1972) • Спящий (1973) • Любовь и смерть (1975) • Энни Холл (1977) • Интерьеры (1978) • Манхэттен (1979) • Воспоминания о звёздной пыли (1980) • Комедия секса в летнюю ночь (1982) • Зелиг (1983) • Бродвей Дэнни Роуз (1984) • Пурпурная роза Каира (1985) • Ханна и её сёстры (1986) • Дни радио (1987) • Сентябрь (1987) • Другая женщина (1988) • Нью-йоркские истории (1989) • Преступления и проступки (1989) • Элис (1990) • Тени и туман (1991) • Мужья и жёны (1992) • Загадочное убийство в Манхэттене (1993) • Пули над Бродвеем (1994) • Не пей воду (1994) • Великая Афродита (1995) • Все говорят, что я люблю тебя (1996) • Разбирая Гарри (1997) • Знаменитость (1998) • Сладкий и гадкий (1999) • Мелкие мошенники (2000) • Проклятие нефритового скорпиона (2001) • Голливудский финал (2002) • Кое-что ещё (2003) • Мелинда и Мелинда (2004) • Матч-пойнт (2005) • Сенсация (2006) • Мечта Кассандры (2007) • Вики Кристина Барселона (2008) • Будь что будет (2009) • Ты встретишь таинственного незнакомца (2010) • Полночь в Париже (2011) • Римские приключения (2012)