Movie Guide

Cafe Society (2016) – in cinemas on Friday, Aug. 26
 
Set in the 1930s, the new Woody Allen film Cafe Society, out in wide release this week, follows young Bronx native Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) to Hollywood, where he falls in love with the secretary of his powerful uncle, an agent to the stars. After returning to New York he is swept up in the vibrant world of high society nightclub life. The fine cast of this bittersweet romance includes Parker Posey, Blake Lively, Kristen Stewart, and a rubicund Ken Stott as Bobby’s father.
Many critics see Cafe Society as the twilight of Woody Allen. “He is prolific, but does he have anything left to say?” The urge to psychoanalyse Woody Allen through his films wouldn’t be so strong if he didn’t make it so easy. As breezy and feather-light as his scripts can be, they still feel uncomfortably revealing, because he returns so often to the same ideas.

There’s an aggressive, uncompromising stubbornness to the way he keeps making movies about weary older men pursuing venal, shallow, but willing younger women. His neurotic, fussy protagonists — the ones he so often used to play himself — eternally play out his concerns about depression, dissatisfaction, and death. And his obsessive mythologising of the past comes up again and again. In Cafe Society, all three of these familiar touchstones are back in play.

For more info on this movie please visit the official webpage: www.cafesocietymovie.com