Review: 'Tall Dark Stranger' is fast food for thought

Film: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (A)
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto
Rating: ***

A deluded Alfie (Hopkins), yearning for a male child, ditches his wife Helena (Jones) for a nubile (and air-headed) escort Charmaine (Lucy Punch).

Initially succumbing to despondency, Helena is uplifted to the point of annoying smugness by ministrations of the fraudulent soothsayer Crystal.

Despite being married to Roy (Brolin), Sally (Alfie and Helena's daughter) secretly fancies her boss (Banderas), owner of an art gallery.

While Sally dreams of bearing a child and opening her own art gallery, Roy is dangerously on the verge of hackdom, and is secretly enticed by Dia (Pinto), an exotic musicologist from the opposite apartment.

The film is fast food for thought, an easy-going meditation on faith, superstition-induced fatalism, chance, uncertainty, scepticism and the plain selfishness that is central to the human condition.

Though the film isn’t exactly replete with wit, you will stand in awe of its irony, and though it is not altogether unpredictable, one can’t but help being amused by the whole affair.

The cast puts up a great performance. Pinto doesn’t exactly exude muse-worthy brilliance but, then again, her character was such that her qualities were enticing to Roy alone. Anthony Hopkins is always up to the task though he seems misplaced as the lonely Alfie.

Tall Dark Stranger is more than a fable about couples falling out of love with each other. Watch it for its storytelling.

One of the film's strongest points is the motivations that make the characters do what they do. The loutish Roy, for example, doesn't want posterity to remember him as a one-hit wonder. The thought of failure and descending into obscurity strikes terror into his heart.

Roy fears death more than anything because that would snatch him away before he pens his non-existent magnum opus. And when Helena brings up reincarnation, like an archetypical Woody Allen cynic he pooh-poohs it. The loss of Alfie and Helena's son, likewise, moves Alfie to what many would consider a transgression towards his wife.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is a reasonably intriguing dark comedy of manners which is definitely worth a watch.