Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"


Peter Bradshaw
Friday January 6, 2006
The Guardian
The buzz from the American press about Match Point is almost intoxicating. Can it really be true that our country, our capital city, and the film production company created by our national broadcaster has revitalised the career of one of America's greatest film-makers? In a word, no. Or in seven words: I'm really sorry about this, but no. For its premiere at Cannes last year and its UK release now, Match Point had me sitting in the audience clenching my fists as the lights went down and wishing and yearning for this one to be the big Woody Allen comeback movie, absolutely willing it to happen.

It's not too bad; a Patricia Highsmith-ish thriller with a chill of existential pessimism, among some quaintly conceived English upper classes. There are moments of elegance and steel. It is stronger than his last couple of films, and the sheer prolific energy with which these pictures keep tumbling off the production line keeps us, the faithful, nourished with hope that if there is to be a new Late Period of creativity from the master, then Allen's magnificent work-rate might accelerate its arrival. But the problem with Match Point is that the dialogue is composed in a kind of Posh English that Allen seems to have learned from a Berlitz handbook.
Until now, it has been a truism that Richard Curtis is the nearest thing we have to Woody Allen, doing for London what Allen did for Manhattan, siting his comedies in a picturesque capital of his own imagining. Now, remarkably, Woody Allen has repaid the compliment. He has arranged for his characters to have their fateful and serendipitous encounters in upscale touristy locations that look as if they were filmed on Planet Curtis: Notting Hill, the banks of the Thames by Westminster, Bond Street, Tate Modern and West End theatreland.
Match Point returns Allen to the darker themes of Crimes and Misdemeanors, though the skulduggery and violence are here played out at greater and more laborious length. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is Chris, a tennis pro from Ireland, new in London, who begins a Becky Sharp-ish social ascent by romancing Chloe (Emily Mortimer), the daughter of a massively wealthy magnate played by Brian Cox and sister of Tom (Matthew Goode), the supremely confident young man whom he coaches at the club. Things go badly awry when Chris falls for Tom's super-sexy American fiancee, Nola, played by Scarlett Johansson.
Allen had originally set the script in the US, but the opportunity for financing from BBC Films persuaded him to translate it to a British setting. Not too much of a stretch, perhaps, considering Allen's high-end concerns, but a good deal is lost in translation, and he does not have what Robert Altman had in Julian Fellowes, the screenwriter for Gosford Park: someone who really can speak the lingo. Allen's Brit-dialogue sounds clenched, stilted and occasionally plain bizarre. If he was engaged as a script consultant, Fellowes could have explained to Allen that Tate Modern does not have the definite article, that we pronounce the name "Eleanor" with the accent on the first syllable not the last, and a thousand other solecisms. And - snobbery aside - people with pretensions to love high opera do not tend to adore the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber, or at least not without a great deal of pre-emptive English irony.
Rhys-Meyers plays Chris in a very opaque way, which is arguably just how this calculating character should be played, but it is difficult to tell how intentional it is. Mortimer is perfectly plausible as the sweetly shy Chloe, and Johansson is fiery and sexy, though for her, as for everyone else, there are no funny lines. The only actor who really does relax is Matthew Goode as Tom, utterly convincing and authentic as the young patrician. He is real. His dialogue sounds real. Everyone else is ersatz. Could it be that he was allowed to improvise his lines while everyone else was too much in awe of the director to depart from the script? Whatever the truth, Goode is a tremendous find.
Match Point has some interesting moments and a clever twist at the end on the theme of chance and fate. However, as Allen's next movie is reportedly also going to be set in the UK, he really is going to have to learn to speak British at something better than tourist level.

accelerate- przyspieszać
buzz- szum, hałas, zamieszanie
clench- ściskać, zaciskać
coach- trenować (kogoś)
conceive- wymyslić, obmyślić
fiery- płomienny, ognisty
go awry- nie powieść się, wyjść na opak
laborious- mozolny, pracowity, uciążliwy
nourish- odżywiać, karmić
opaque- nieprzenikniony
plausible- przekonywający, wiarygodny
pre-emptive- uprzedzający, zapobiegawczy
quaintly- oryginalnie, ciekawie
reportedly- rzekomo
serendipitous- posiadający dar dokonywania przypadkowych odkryc; przypadkowy (o odkryciu)
skulduggery- machlojki, szwindle
solecism- błąd językowy
steel- determinacja, hart
stilted- patetyczny, napuszony
tumble off- wysypywać się skądś
upscale- ekskluzywny, bogaty
utterly- całkowicie
yearn- pragnąć


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