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Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning attempt a madcap Manhattan adventure in this Woody Allen feature.
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Here’s an odd bit of personal 2020 trivia: The last movie I bought a ticket to see in a theater was “A Rainy Day in New York.” That was in January, when I squandered part of a wintry afternoon in Bologna, Italy, and dragged my blameless spouse to a matinee of what was then the latest Woody Allen film. (A newer one, “Rifkin’s Festival,” has since surfaced at the San Sebastián Film Festival.)
“Rainy Day,” you may recall, had been shelved by its original American distributor, Amazon Studios, in the wake of renewed attention to accusations that Allen had sexually abused his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was a child. The film nonetheless opened in Europe last year. Though I haven’t been much of an Allen fan for a while, I remain, for complicated reasons, a completist, and I happened to be in Italy during its run. The movie is now arriving in theaters in some American cities, which suggests that what we have taken to calling cancel culture is more often a matter of postponement.
This release may also be a way of testing the commitment of Allen’s die-hard defenders. Are you willing to take chances with your physical health for the opportunity to sample his latest cocktail of Great American Songbook excerpts, luxurious interiors, dated cultural allusions and casual misogyny? I wouldn’t advise it, but I can also tell you that the experience via streaming, while epidemiologically safer, isn’t much better.
I suppose I could also tell you that “A Rainy Day in New York” shows more liveliness and wit than some of its recent precursors, like “Magic in the Moonlight,” “Café Society” or “Wonder Wheel.” It’s easy on the eyes, thanks to the characteristically elegant work of the production designer, Santo Loquasto; the director of photography, Vittorio Storaro; and a cast of attractive youngish and midcareer performers. The titular city looks good under gray skies, even if it’s mostly standard tourist fare. We breeze through Central Park, bits of SoHo and Greenwich Village, and some of the fancier hotels.
Upper-crust Manhattan is the native ground of Gatsby Welles (Timothée Chalamet), a college student with the tastes and temperament of a much older fellow. Rebelling against his hoity-toity, culture-vulture mother — who eventually shows up in the regal person of Cherry Jones — he prefers jazz piano and high-stakes poker to Henry James. His artistic reference points are a bit eccentric for Generation Z, but that kind of anachronism has been part of the Allen gestalt at least since the dawn of the current century. And with a name like Gatsby Welles, you might have some cultural hangups too.
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