A crowd outside of the theater clamors to get into two sold out showings of Woody Allen’s latest movie. The herd of people extending down the block, paired with a sighting of Isabelle Huppert, would lead one to believe that this could very well be New York in the mid-90s, when Allen was still at a peak of what he would refer to as “pseudo-intellectual” cachet in a city that once prided itself on pseudo-intellectualism before falling completely prey to what the tourists wanted (T.G.I. Friday’s and Hamilton). But no, we are in the Paris of 2019, one of the only places that has agreed to distribute A Rainy Day in New York after it was banned in the U.S. because of the ongoing sexual allegations against Allen. The very ones from Dylan Farrow that arose in 1992, when Allen fever in New York was still a viable draw to the indie box office sensibilities of that town.
While New York has long been Allen’s primary muse in film, it is interesting to note that this is the first time its name has been featured in a title (barring the auteur trilogy New York Stories, which he had no hand in choosing the name of) and that this is the very city that has shunned him most forcefully. A city that wasn’t once so policing in political correctness, the epicenter of a philosophy that promoted separating the artist from the work. With that pendulum having completely swung in the other direction in what is now arguably the most corporate and least creative city, Allen has clearly chosen to remain in an alternate universe of New York. One in which the Met is essentially empty to allow two romantics to wander through it undeterred by the endless iPhone photo snappings, one in which SoHo is still deemed an “artsy” neighborhood and one where nobody uses Uber but instead always hails a yellow cab. Allen cares not for the real New York. And “real,” in this sense, is not designed to infer how gritty and authentic it is, but rather, how sanitized and banal it has become. Of course, Allen has his own sanitization at play, with a Gossip Girl-oriented world in which its main characters live in palatial Upper East Side abodes and there are actually multiple large rooms in every apartment featured. To boot, our protagonist is named Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet), and we are supposed to take it seriously without the moniker ever being addressed or mocked for its pretentiousness. Relegated to an upstate elitist school called Yardley, the chip on Gatsby’s shoulder can only be alleviated by chips in high-stakes poker games and his girlfriend, fellow Yardley student Ashleigh Enright (Elle Fanning). As an aspiring journalist, she manages to snag an interview with known for his mercurialness director Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber) in the city (in many ways, she is another version of Scoop’s Sondra Pransky, played by Scarlett Johansson, still “daring” to defend the director even now).
Seeing this as an opportunity to show Ashleigh (from Tucson, Arizona) his hometown with a flair for the romantic, he suggests they make a weekend of it, committed to using his $20,000 winnings from a poker game to appropriately subsidize the costly endeavor (in this sense, Allen has some grasp of reality about the city). Deciding to stay at The Pierre because it’s far enough away from where his parents are but still close enough for Ashleigh to get a prime view of Central Park, Gatsby starts eagerly making plans to hit some of his favorite spots in the city, including the Carlyle, where they can listen to the piano player and have drinks. Because every early twenties Woody Allen character is simply Woody Allen talking through them. But sure, we can suspend disbelief to humor Gatsby his pomposity, despite himself having contempt for his mother’s (Cherry Jones), who insisted on his diligent reading and playing the piano when he was young(er). Oh the horror.
As Ashleigh proceeds to charm Roland with her obsequiousness (some of the comments she makes about him never compromising for commercial success is, one imagines, how Allen sees himself) and resemblance to his first wife, who was named Ashley and also went to Yardley, Gatsby finds himself volunteering to be an extra on an old high school acquaintance’s student film over on Minetta Lane, intrigued by the mention that an old flame’s sister, Chan a.k.a. Shannon (Selena Gomez), would be there. Because Allen has no qualms about continuing to display “inappropriately” founded relationships in his movies. Thus, the repartee between the two is instantly established as she mocks him for being skittish about sharing an onscreen kiss just because he has a girlfriend from Arizona (“What do you two talk about? Cactus?” “Rattlesnakes.”).
After his debut performance in the brief scene, Gatsby is met with the news that Ashleigh is being offered too much insight on a scoop to rejoin him, now tied up with “Rollie’s” screenwriter, Ted Davidoff (Jude Law), as the two try to chase down Roland, who has disappeared to go on a bender to assuage his depression over the movie. An exchange between the two in his car again sheds light on how Allen sees his viewers, particularly younger, female ones (of which there might be none at this point), as he asks, “Did you understand the movie?” when she gives him her answer to the favorite one he’s done with Pollard. She admits not really, but that it made her feel something. Because women, with all their feelings, have no sense of the cerebral, Allen seems to jibe.
As we continue through Allen’s alternate universe of the city, Gatsby walks moodily through the rain, never stepping in a puddle, to his brother’s massive apartment. Hunter (Will Rogers) has confessed to having a huge problem once his fiancée leaves the room: he can’t go through with their wedding, her laugh is too insufferable. It’s classic Allen. Along with frequent allusions to prostitutes (for like so many men of his era, a Madonna/whore complex is deeply ingrained). Ashleigh clearly proves herself to be something of one, trading Davidoff for matinee idol Francisco Vega (Diego Luna) when she arrives at the Queens studio where Davidoff has speculated that Pollard has run off to so as to pretend he’s Norma Desmond. Her quick acquiescence to his charisma further delays any intent she might have had to get back to Gatsby, now forced into attending his mother’s party after being spotted at the Met by his aunt and uncle, thus his presence in the city being outed to all. It is at this point, too, that the “oldest profession,” as Allen frequently refers to it, comes into play. For Gatsby finally makes it to the Carlyle where an attractive woman, Terry (Kelly Rohrbach), starts to flirt with him. But of course she’s an “escort,” she reveals not long into their conversation. Initially requesting $500 for the night, Gatsby offers her $5,000 to pose as Ashleigh during his mother’s party. As the evening digresses for both Gatsby and Ashleigh, the rain-soaked sidewalks of New York are intended to make audiences feel wistful and yearning for it. But it is a New York that exists only in Allen’s mind, and perhaps genuinely in the sheltered existence there that he has taken on (especially in these tarring and feathering times).
Try as he might to convince us that it isn’t a cesspool of humanity (there is nary a shot in the movie where the constant pour-over of humans is evident), the ersatz quality of this New York would have only been sent further over the top by being shot in black and white (as it was for Manhattan, which made sense in its era). At one point, even Gatsby has to admit to Chan (as they stroll through the empty Met to look at paintings like “Madame X,” which Gatsby likens his mother to), “Paris would be nice,” referring to his potential plans for the future. It seems Paris reciprocates the sentiment toward Allen as its theaters roll out the picture this week.
For this and so many other reasons, there is an irony that Allen has chosen to go back to New York in film at this moment (which he also did with Wonder Wheel), when it’s very evident the best work he’s done in this century all takes place in Europe (Match Point, Cassandra’s Dream, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris)–the only place that doesn’t have objections to embracing him. But it seems that Allen is caught up in the fantasy, like so many others, of what New York used to be. Damnation from his own kind be damned. Along with an acknowledgement of a New York that isn’t all charming Central Park jaunts and smoke-filled rooms with bluesy piano tunes.
