Movie review: “A rainy day in New York”: Woody Allen says hello – culture

Twenty years ago, A Rainy Day in New York would have been one of the films of the season. Today Woody Allen’s work can hardly be separated from old allegations of abuse that came up again in the Metoo debate and are likely to end his career.

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Stuttgart – Woody Allen, the creator of film classics such as “Der Stadtneurotiker”, seemed invulnerable. A loyal, more educated, middle-class audience was looking forward to his next film and made a pilgrimage to the cinemas, women as numerous as men. Allen’s Jewish humor was legendary, his complicated and hilarious relationship dramas, in which men often did not cut a particularly good figure, as very human and exemplary.

All of this can also be found in Woody Allen’s latest film “A rainy Day in New York”, in which a student couple on a weekend trip to the Big Apple get into the romantic and other confusions of life. But the filmmaker’s public perception has completely changed since the Metoo debate in 2017.

Today one suspicion is enough to destroy a career

Then the accusations boiled up again that Allen had abused his adopted daughter Dylan. Allen’s ex-wife Mia Farrow raised it for the first time in 1992 as part of the separation, triggered by Allen’s affair with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom he later married. In the 1992 Dylan case, the prosecution waived a child molestation charge because investigators and an expert witness found no evidence.

Dylan Farrow, then seven years old, incriminated her father heavily in 2013; Farrow’s and Allen’s second adopted child, Moses, publicly contradicted her. Allen himself has always denied the allegations. The situation became threatening for him, however, by the Metoo debate, which was overdue and rightly swept away many violent men – but which also tended to reverse the principle “in dubio pro reo”: Since then, one suspicion has been enough to destroy a career.

Woody Allen’s sarcastic look was always gentle

Can, should, be allowed to watch “A Rainy Day in New York” or not? This question cannot be answered any more than the question of whether or not and what guilt everyone has been responsible for.

Those who only see the film as a film can feel nostalgic. With all the sarcasm, Woody Allen’s humorous view of his city, the people and life was always gentle and loving. This time, too, New York appears as a wonderful Moloch that can make everything possible and devour everything.

Chalamet is overwhelmed with the Allen role

The snuggly Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet) from a wealthy New York house travels incognito from the unloved elite university to the city because his Arizona girlfriend Ashleigh (Elle Fanning) is allowed to conduct an interview with a film director (Liev Schreiber) for the university newspaper. It turns out to be difficult, both paths part, and while Gatsby keeps finding new traces of his past, such as Chan (Selena Gomez), the younger sister of an ex-girl, Ashleigh goes on a fast run through the film business, meets neurotic authors (Jude Law) and violent stars (Diego Luna).

It is about self-discovery and about self-assurance in a world that only the upper middle class upwards knows – but as always, everyone has an eye for the universal. All the characters speak in his typical onliners, which some adopt as their own (Gomez, Fanning), while others mainly recite – Chalamet, for example, looks good, but is latently overwhelmed in the role of Gatsby, which young Allen probably played himself would have. Selena Gomez as a very self-confident Chan in any case puts it in her pocket.

The actors have distanced themselves

This is important with regard to the other female figure Ashleigh, who at first glance looks like a blonde dumbass from the country – which is why all Metoo inquisitors are now rubbing their hands together: female cliché! Since Beatlemania at the latest, it has been publicly documented that there are young women who rave about male idols in show business. Ashleigh is the prototype of the curious, sympathetic, slightly inexperienced girl next door, to whom all doors easily open and in whom the lust of instinct-driven men is reflected – which is no longer a cliché. Elle Fanning embodies the projection screen of male fantasies brilliantly, and she gets away with it in this amusing little film.

Like everything else, this is also a matter of interpretation, if you want to turn a rope for everyone, you get a steep template here. Amazon Studios produced “A rainy Day in New York” in 2018 and then distanced themselves from it because of the public debate; they did not bring the film to the cinema or on Amazon Prime. Chalamet and Gomez chose the balancing act: They probably didn’t want to do without having an Allen film in their vita, but afterwards they also distanced themselves and donated their fees.

Woody Allen’s career may now be over. He is 84 and can look back on a great life’s work. His humor and his view of the world are therefore not lost: The delicious series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, for example, about a housewife and mother in New York in the late 50s who wants to do stand-up comedy as a woman, is like one Never-ending Woody Allen film – and completely unencumbered.

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