Ostracized since the meetoo wave, Woody Allen is releasing
Rifkin's Festival
on Wednesday , a comedy about an aging, sardonic and neurotic cinephile.
This new film looks like a testament for the New Yorker, who admitted his desire to hang up the gloves.
The director had already been experiencing difficulties in financing his films for several years;
the hurdles have piled up since his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused him of sexually molesting her as a child.
Neither of the two investigations launched was successful and Woody Allen denies it altogether.
Rifkin's Festival
, available online and in a few theaters in the United States, does not come out until Wednesday in France, one of the countries where the public is most loyal to the filmmaker, two years after its presentation at the opening of the San Sebastian festival ( Spain).
Filmed on location, it features a certain Mort Rifkin, a failed and hypochondriac writer.
Actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, close to Woody Allen and accustomed to supporting roles, embodies this Jewish intellectual obsessed with women, religion and the meaning of life - a semi-autobiographical character omnipresent in the East Coast filmmaker.
A former film professor, lover of the great European directors of the 20th century and of the New Wave, Rifkin travels to San Sebastian to accompany his wife, Sue (Gina Gershon).
He suspects the latter, press officer in the cinema, to maintain an affair with the director in vogue whom she deals with, and for whom he has the greatest contempt, Philippe (Louis Garrel, perfect in the role of the filmmaker head slapping and nonchalant).
Read alsoEnd of career announced for Woody Allen who says he has lost a lot of his “enthusiasm”
A nod to 20th century European cinema
For his part, Mort will fall in love with another woman, Jo (Elena Anaya), a cardiologist much younger than him, whom he will consult under all pretexts, before trying to free her from the grip of her husband, a passionate but violent artist played by Sergi Lopez.
At 86, the author of
Annie Hall
and
Manhattan
does not think outside the box.
The repartee is sometimes tasty, but the situations somewhat hackneyed, in a comedy in the form of a tribute to 20th century European auteur cinema.
Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Buñuel... The film is sprinkled with nods to the great directors whom Woody Allen venerates, he who makes his character say, sorry for contemporary cinematographic production, that in the history of cinema,
"the Europeans have arrived, and the films have become adults"
.
Allen himself appeared weary, during an interview given to actor Alec Baldwin, on the latter's Instagram account, at the end of June, where he did not rule out his 50th film, which he must shoot in Paris in September, the last.
"I'm probably going to do that extra movie but a lot of the enthusiasm has evaporated
," he said.
"I don't have as much fun making a film and having it shown on the big screen anymore
," he added, referring to the arrival of streaming.
He dares everything!
Claude Lelouche
Is Woody Allen like the character of
Rifkin's Festival
, overwhelmed by the developments in the world around him, and finding only the classics of the 7th art as his only refuge?
In the film, Rifkin dreams, in black and white, replaying in pastiche mode cult scenes from his favorite films, from
Jules and Jim
to
A Man and a Woman
, until finding himself, as in
The Seventh Seal
, playing failures with death (played by Christoph Waltz)... who enjoins him to watch his cholesterol to postpone the deadline!
Crossed during a private screening of the film in Paris, the director Claude Lelouch smiled at the impertinent tribute made by the New Yorker to his cinema:
"He dares everything!"
, he let go, leaving the session.