Being a Woody Allen film about love, life and relationships, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Strangerbegins just as you'd expect; with the black and white opening title credits, the jaunty music, and the inevitable narrator. After dire offerings such asCassandra's Dream, it is an opening that will put you in the mindset that this is Allen back to doing what he does best. Despite the fact that you may have an inclination of how the narrative will unfurl and the type of dilemmas the characters will encounter, you can't help but find yourself with that content smile plastered across your face in anticipation for the following Woody Allen frivolities.
Like past successes such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Vicky Christina Barcelona, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, handpicks a few characters, highlights their love life and zooms in on the day to day catastrophes that unwind amongst family members, careers and everyday home life.
Firstly we have the married couple of Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones), whose marriage is breaking down due to Alfie's mid-life crisis and his need to return to his younger fitter days. Their daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts), is also having marital issues with her hubby, Roy (Josh Brolin), a struggling writer who is putting off the idea of having kids and instead finds himself transfixed with the beauty in the red dress, Dia (Freida Pinto), who resides in the opposite building block.
As the narrative continues, further spanners in the works are introduced, mainly in the form of Sally's seductive art gallery boss, Greg (Antonia Banderas) and Alfie's new and much younger fiancé, Charmaine (Lucy Punch).
As the characters bump into each other and interact, the relationships twist and turn into an inevitable conclusion of disaster but Allen imbues this with his token dark humour that makes you laugh and cringe. You feel sympathy for the characters as things fall apart, but in equal measure feel as if they deserve all the mess they find themselves in due to their rather selfish wishes. We all want that perfect lifestyle of career and lover, and the reality is that not everyone will achieve that dream job while continuing a passionate and committed relationship.
The acting is passable, nothing particularly stand-out, other than the hilariously over-the-top performance from Lucy Punch, who drains as much comedy-gold chavness from Charmaine as possible. Naomi Watts is far from bad, but she does suffer from the problem of the occasional wooden line-delivery due to her faux British accent, an affliction seen with other actresses such as Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta.
Being no exception from many other Woody Allen films, ...Dark Stranger makes the setting of the film as much of the character as the people. Returning to the city of London after exploring it in other films such as Match Point, we are given a rather warm looking England with hues of orange, a colour sometimes out of place from the usual greys used to depict the city. But while ...Dark Stranger is less of a love-note to the city as seen in his love for New York in Manhattan or Annie Hall, it is nice to see London presented as a vibrant place, unlike the boiling pot of crime and hoodlums as it is usually seen as.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger concludes in the usual Woody Allen open-ended nature. Nothing is truly solved and the only character who is left somewhat content is that of Sally's mother Helena, the woman who gives the film its title in the first place due to her frequent visits to a psychic. Helena may be the furthest from a real sense of reality as she embroils herself in the worlds of fortune-telling and mysticism, but she ends up the happiest.
So maybe that's the moral of Woody Allen's tale; don't bog yourself down with the inevitable acceptance of reality and instead find a level of contentment in your own ridiculous illusions.
3/5
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