Woody Allen is currently in focus again, which has led to “A Rainy Day In New York“Did not appear as planned in 2018 – and thus for the first time since 1982 no new Allen feature film was released in a year. Now the time has come. Much has been said and written about the various allegations against Allen (also on this page), which is why it should really only be about the film itself at this point – and its context within its extensive filmography. The filmmaker, who won four Oscar awards for his scripts for “The City of Neuroscience”, “Hannah and Her Sisters,” and “Midnight In Paris,” brought us some of the best American comedies of recent decades. “A Rainy Day In New York” is a long way from that – the romantic comedy is definitely worth seeing and entertaining, especially thanks to shooting star Timothée Chalamet (“Lady Bird”, “Dune”).
Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet), who studies outside of school and poses as a young dandy, is planning a romantic weekend in New York with his girlfriend Ashleigh (Elle Fanning). But before the fun, the college newspaper reporter wants to interview a famous director (Liev Schreiber) who is notorious for his whims. In the process, she also meets screenwriter Ted Davidoff (Jude Law) and film star Francisco Vega (Diego Luna) and learns more about the three men than she really wanted to know. Meanwhile, Gatsby wanders aimlessly through the streets and meets, among others, Chan (Selena Gomez) again, the little sister of an ex-girlfriend who has grown into an attractive woman. But by all sorts of coincidences he misses Ashleigh again and again this weekend …
–
Timothée Chalamet is the highlight in Woody Allen’s new film.
How unbelievable charm and charisma young star Timothée Chalamet has should have got around by now – and if not: We simply recommend watching “Call Me By Your Name” again, to whose Elio Perlman his Gatsby in Woody Allen’s “A Rainy Day In New York “. Once again, Chalamet plays a comedy-compatible (hetero) version of Elio with great class, so that the suspicion is entirely legitimate that Woody Allen must have seen Luca Guadagnino’s masterpiece shortly before he put this Gatsby Welles (the name is of course no coincidence) on his legendary Olympia SM3 typewriter.
Nevertheless, this Gatsby is also a typical Allen protagonist. In the English original, his friend Ashleigh, played by Elle Fanning (“Maleficent 2: Powers of Darkness”) in a wonderfully naive-blonde way, describes him as “quaint“- a word for which there are a number of translations in the German language:” rustic “,” whimsical “,” drollig “,” cute “, but also” lovely “,” original “and” curious “- and all these adjectives apply to Gatsby. He can be amusing and lovable, personable. And yet you might want to rub him for his annoying know-it-all, his stupid little tics and his elitist demeanor.
The chatty side of everyone
He thus resembles Alvy Singer and Isaac Davis, once played by Allen himself, in “Der Stadtneurotiker” or “Manhattan”, the eponymous heroine played by Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine” or Jesse Eisenberg’s role in “Café Society”. Like all of them, Gatsby tends to be talkative (typical of Allen) and, despite his high level of education and eloquence, appears again and again like an oversized child who doesn’t really want to fit into the adult world. Gatsby speaks fluent French, plays the piano at an advanced level and has already read everything and even understood a lot of it when it comes to classical literature. However, the guy has no idea or just a clue of what he could do with his life after graduating from university. He only knows what he doesn’t want to be: “Test pilot or proctologist”, as we learn during one of his extensive voiceovers.
Many of the characters – not just Gatsby and Ashleigh, but specifically the filmmaker trio given by Liev Schreiber (“Ray Donovan”), Jude Law (“Sherlock Holmes”) and Diego Luna (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) – seem so caricaturely self-centered that one might think that everyone wants to make fun of the upper class of New York with them. Or is he really like that himself and thinks such behavior is normal? It is not easy to come to such a conclusion. It is noticeable, however, that there are at least three characters (all women!) Who actually come across as authentic, surprisingly down-to-earth people: Chan, Gatsby’s mother (Cherry Jones) and a call girl played by Kelly Rohrbach (“Baywatch”) whom the young man spontaneously hires as an Ashleigh double for a family celebration.
–
Stark: Selena Gomez.
However, these figures often remain too one-dimensional. The plot and Allen’s famous polished dialogues are also well below the level of his great old classics. Even behind more recent highlights such as “Match Point”, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” or “Midnight In Paris”, his latest New York comedy is noticeably lagging behind. Individual conversations seem so affected, many sequences are so artificial and constructed – especially numerous moments the bravely alluding to Elle Fanning. But in the end, “A Rainy Day In New York” is still well worth seeing, always entertaining and extremely entertaining.
This is partly due to the atmospheric, more than respectable indoor and outdoor shots by cameraman Vittorio Storaro (“Apocalypse Now”), who even manages to unite the various scenes with precipitation and overcast skies (the film title makes sense!) to give timeless melancholy shine. The main reason, however, is called Timothée Chalamet. It is just great fun to look at the mimes in his sometimes arrogant, then openly contemptuous or in the next moment shy and furtive eyes and to enjoy the posture that fits perfectly in each of these situations.
Conclusion: Often artificial, constructed and also quite predictable, but thanks to the excellent leading actor Woody Allen’s melancholy romantic comedy can still entertain.
–
