- Comedy of romantic misadventures starring Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning and set in New York is full of classic Allen tropes
- Yet director’s understanding of romance is woefully out of date, and the film is stilted and phoney; Amazon shelved it, and should have kept it under wraps
2/5 stars
Two of Woody Allen's most enduring passions " the city of New York and age-inappropriate relationships " are at the centre of his latest comedy, which stars Timothee Chalamet ( Call Me by Your Name ) and Elle Fanning (Maleficent) as young lovers embroiled in a series of romantic misadventures.
Completed almost a year ago, A Rainy Day in New York was shelved by Amazon in the United States after long-standing sexual assault allegations against Allen resurfaced.
This prompted a number of cast members to donate their earnings to charities in support of the #MeToo movement, and distance themselves from Allen and the project.
Although it is finally seeing the light of day, it's difficult to argue that the film would not have been better served left under wraps.
Allen's follow-up to 2017's Wonder Wheel displays many of his worst tendencies as a filmmaker, while highlighting just how out of touch the 83-year-old is with the current climate.
Fanning plays Ashleigh, a beautiful yet naive Southern journalism student who travels from her vaguely prestigious upstate college to the Big Apple to interview renowned filmmaker Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber).
Her spoilt, pseudointellectual boyfriend, Gatsby (Chalamet), tags along, determined to hijack the weekend and show Ashleigh the romantic highlights of his beloved city.
Pollard, in the midst of an existential crisis, is bewitched by the much younger Ashleigh, who also catches the eye of Jude Law's screenwriter and Diego Luna's leading man, on her whirlwind tour of New York's movie scene.
As the bad weather and Ashleigh's mounting obligations keep the young lovers apart, an increasingly morose and suspicious Gatsby visits his brother (Will Rogers) and bumps into Shannon (Selena Gomez), an old family friend, all while doing his best to avoid his overbearing mother (Cherry Jones).
Chalamet does his best to serve as the director's surrogate, obsessed with poker, piano players and classical literature in a way only Allen would think believable.
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The treatment of Ashleigh is especially problematic, as the ditsy Southern belle is tossed from one sleazy older man to the next, while Allen attempts to romanticise it as a sexual awakening of sorts.
The filmmaker's failure to understand 21st century youth is painfully evident. He appears to have looked no further than The Catcher in the Rye or MAD Magazine to get a handle on how young people behave, and the results are excruciatingly stilted and phoney.
The young cast appears totally lost in A Rainy Day in New York's fabricated, anachronistic world view, while noble efforts from the more experienced supporting cast are all but washed away by the director's woeful downpour.
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A Rainy Day in New York will be screened on August 21, 24 and 26 as part of the Summer International Film Festival in Hong Kong. It will then be screened at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in September as part of the Golden Scene Special programme, before going on general release on October 3
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