Match Point
July 2006 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

He’s not referring to tennis when he says, "I’d rather be lucky than good." Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is a professional tennis player who has quit the tour for the job of pro at the exclusive Queen’s Club in London. Recognizing that he’ll never make it big as a tennis pro, he’s trying his luck instead at moving up into London’s high society -- even as an Irishman of humble origins. After his day at coaching the idle rich, we see him alone in bed studying Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or listening to opera. He’s boning up on the tastes of the super rich.

Chris’s lucky streak starts when a student at the club, Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), invites him to the family’s box at the opera. Tom’s sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer) can’t help noticing Chris’s good looks and attractive reserve. She’s gawky and tiresome, yet the romance flickers alive. Chris’s ascent up the ladder is fast, with extra acceleration from Old Man Hewett (Brian Cox), who makes a place for him in one of his companies. Trouble enters paradise early, though, when Chris and Chloe double-date with Tom and Nola (Scarlett Johansson), Tom’s sexy blond American girlfriend. Chris and Nola recognize at once that they are playing the same game, but Nola is neither lucky nor good at it. She lacks Chris’s cunning and polish, and she gets dumped by Tom for a woman of his own class -- to the relief of his elegant mother (Penelope Wilton). But Chris’s lust for the sensual Nola overwhelms him, and he pursues her even after he marries Chloe.

How far will he go, how far must he go, in order to continue teetering between his affluent new life and the gratification of his lust for Nola? The opening shot of the film is a close-up of a tennis ball teetering on the net -- Woody Allen’s image of fate. Later we see a parallel close-up -- of a wedding band tossed and teetering on a fence rail above the River Thames. Where it lands determines Chris’s fate, and the movie thereafter becomes excruciatingly suspenseful.

Match Point is a reprise of Woody Allen’s 1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors, but without the humor, without Woody Allen in the cast. It is shocking, chilling, and bitterly ironic. Yet it is a beautiful movie. The acting is superb. The score is comprised of lush arias from Italian opera, usually a thematic match to the event at hand. The color palette is rich and creamy, subtle and understated, with Allen’s usual elegant interiors -- Chloe and Chris’s stunning apartment of glass walls overlooking the Thames, for example. Because of the availability of BBC funding, it was shot in London, not in the Manhattan that Allen knows so well, and British critics have sneered and joked at incongruities in dialogue and setting. The movie is nevertheless a technical masterpiece, unforgettable.

The DVD transfer is highly detailed, preserving the look of the movie admirably. The sound is clean and clear mono. Yes, mono. Allen has yet to explore anything but single-channel sound in his movies. It almost seems as if he is afraid that sound tricks might get in the way of the drama. There are no featurettes at all -- no interviews with Woody telling us what he was after or what Jonathan Rhys-Meyers felt about his role. We are left on our own to ponder Chris Wilton’s luck and what we have done with the luck in our own lives.

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