FilmSnobReviews

Title: Rifkin’s Festival
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Elena Anaya
Runtime: 1 hr 28 mins

What It Is: Mort Rifkin (Shawn) and his wife Sue (Gershon) are in the North of Spain for a film festival that Sue is doing PR for. Mort is an avid cinephile, but one stuck somewhere in the past. When Sue has an incident with the handsome young director Philippe (Louis Garrel) Mort finds himself drawn to a beautiful but flawed younger doctor in Jo (Anaya). But there’s really no way he has a shot with a married younger woman surely…or is there?

What We Think: This is a Woody Allen pipedream. Mort is a surrogate for Woody. He certainly wishes he were married to a woman of the caliber of Gina Gershon (for the record I do not blame anyone for that) and likewise making Mort interested in a younger woman certainly stinks of using your characters as pawns for one’s own reality. I’m a Woody fan, not a defender though, nonetheless this film has got pretense up the wazoo. It is increasingly difficult to take this film seriously as anything other than what it presents itself as. Woody Allen roleplay. Structurally it’s fine. Allen hasn’t written a truly brilliant piece since MAYBE Blue Jasmine. One could argue for Irrational Man but I think that film is only okay. It’s really sort of depressing to see Allen still pushing the same sorts of narratives he has been. Specifically when in the modern context guys like Spike Jonze and Noah Baumbach are doing it better. Wallace Shawn is harmless. Gina Gershon is good and Garrel and Anaya make for great supporting characters even if they’re let down by Woody’s writing.

Our Grade: C-, Did I like it? No. No, I did not. Did I hate it? Also no. It’s just sort of…there. It exists for its audience of one. Which is the same guy many of Woody’s latest films have been made for. You don’t need to see this. Not really. If you’ve seen anything Woody Allen has put out in the last five years sufficed to say you’ve got this one figured out.