“Melinda and Melinda,” Woody Allen’s latest comedy about the beautiful and bewildered residents of Manhattan’s tonier neighborhoods, marks a partial return to form but a continued distancing from his Jewish identity.
There’s plenty of paranoia, self-doubt and guilt, but that’s hardly the exclusive province of Jews. What’s missing — and is sorely missed — is Woody’s typical salting of Jewish-themed wisecracks.
Allen’s appearance in his films makes them patently Jewish, and this is the first since “Sweet and Lowdown” (1999) in which he does not give himself a role. But it is not only his absence — unavoidable, since the central characters are in their 30s — that strips the movie of a dimension of ethnic personality.
The setting is the WASPy Upper East Side and Greenwich Village, rather than Allen’s old cinematic stomping grounds on the Upper West Side. While the apartments and lofts are snazzy and well appointed, they also feel oddly generic.
A bigger problem is that most of the one-liners go to Will Ferrell (“Anchorman”), who’s successfully played clowns but has no idea how to create a three-dimensional character. For much of the movie, Ferrell aspires to be an obtuse, 21st-century Tony Roberts (the wonderful foil from “Annie Hall”); the rest of the time he does an embarrassing Allen impersonation.
Although Ferrell gets a laugh with a throwaway line about Nuremberg — the only Jewish joke in the movie, to my ears — I suspect that Allen cut a bunch of similar gags from the screenplay after he cast the part, or perhaps after he started shooting.
The good news is that Allen has regained his sense of story structure after the pointless, contrived high jinks of “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,” “Hollywood Ending” and “Anything Else.”
“Melinda and Melinda” begins in a restaurant, where writers Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine are debating the distinction between comedy and tragedy. A dining companion relates an anecdote, which the writers both retell — one comic, one tragic.
In the heavier story, Melinda (Radha Mitchell) drops in on college friend Laurel (Chloe Sevigny) and her husband Lee (Jonny Lee Miller), interrupting their dinner party with a tale of her broken marriage in St. Louis, a lost custody battle and a drinking problem.
The couple let Melinda stay with them while she gets her life in order, even as their lives are slowly coming apart. In typical Allen style, what unfolds is messy and absurd, but not grim.
The comic story begins in similar fashion, with downstairs neighbor Melinda (Mitchell again) barging in on a dinner party that filmmaker Susan (Amanda Peet) and her husband Hobie (Ferrell) are throwing for a prospective investor. This opening also develops into a rumba of concealed emotions, frustrated ambition and changed partners.
Allen quickly erases the distinction between the two story lines, so that the “tragic” tale is suffused with gentle humor and the “comic” narrative has acres of angst. His theme isn’t that there is a thin line between laughter and tears, but that the interpretation of events is in the eye of the beholder.
Alas, it is human nature that our immersion in our own circumstances prevents us from seeing the humor and ridiculousness that are obvious to others. It may not be Chekhov — or even vintage Woody — but it’s not bad.
Unfortunately, the casting of Mitchell as both Melindas — combined with forgettable performances by the nondescript supporting players, except for Sevigny — makes it difficult to regain our bearings every time the stories switch. Yet “Melinda and Melinda” gives hope that Woody still has one or two great movies in him. This is his best-looking picture in years, thanks to the rich amber hues achieved by veteran cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“McCabe and Mrs. Miller”).
And while it’s not a completely satisfying film — or even a Jewish one — it has flashes of inspiration. For Woody fans who endured his last three duds, that’s enough.
“Melinda and Melinda” opens Wednesday, March 23, in the Bay Area.