電影《雨天·紐約》影評：[Film Review] A Raining Day in New York (2019) 6.3/10

Shelved in the stateside in the light of the escalation of Allen’s decades-long sexual assault allegations, A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK, his 48th feature film and a white-bread adolescent romance plays out chiefly in a one-day span, has no trouble in charming audience in the other side of the Atlantic.

The template is an egregiously well-worn one even the protagonists are, age-wise, considerably rejuvenated to undergraduates, Chalamet plays Gatsby Welles, yes, his name alone is a dead giveaway that he has a very old soul, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, loving playing pianoforte in vintage bars, hanging around museums and anachronistically old-fashioned in the romantic front too, aka. Allen’s own invariable alter ego, which is concisely recapitulated by his girlfriend Ashleigh Enright (Fanning) as 「quirky」.

Gatsby and Ashleigh intend to spend a romantic weekend in the Big Apple, as she is assigned to interview famed movie director Roland Pollard (Schreiber) for the college gazette. A supposedly simple task which is prolonged into a farrago of (mis)adventures for both, separately. Gatsby is miffed by Ashleigh's cancelling of their lunch schedule because Roland invites her for a private screening of his new film, and wanders on the drizzly street, he encounters Shannon (Gomez, perkily taking in her stride with the default manic pixie dream girl set-up), the sister of one of his ex-girlfriends, and their meet-cute is conveniently facilitated by Ashleigh’s absence as she becomes further involved with Roland’s sudden existential crisis and his screenwriter Ted Davidoff’s (Law) discovery that his wife Connie (Hall) is cheating on him with his best friend (「corny」 is ringing high in this reviewer’s ears).

After grudgingly showing his appearance in an annual party hosted by his affluent mother Mrs. Welles (Jones, pluckily nails the critical bombshell-dropping scene with strapping intensity and candor), which he has intended to skip in the first place, with a high-end escort Terry (Rohrbach) impersonating Ashleigh, whereas the real Ashleigh seizes her star-struck opportunity with matinee idol Francisco Vega (Luna) and decides to put out because it is an act that her grandchildren will be proud of (one of the quintessentially shallow American mores, and one tends to feel extremely sorry for her posterity), Gatsby finally reunites with Ashleigh in the end of the day, but their ingrown incongruity manifested in their respective routes of the day speaks volumes, a duly breakup segues the morning after, but problematically, Allen still firmly stands behind his own sex for lending a shopworn finale to fulfill Gatsby’s pleasure.

Spontaneous lutz galore elicited by predictable but effective comedy of errors and wisecracks (although a horribly fake anti-erectile laughter is cringeworthy), but today’s viewer may also sense a vexing tinge creep in through Allen’s thinly veiled partiality on gender, Fanning does go out on a limb to exert her rarely-mined comedic bent, but her caricatural effort also, inadvertently or not, betrays Allen’s own jaundiced view of the opposite sex, a sylph-like Ashleigh doffed to her undies with only a trench coat to cover her body is mildly exploitative and contemptuous in the context. Thankfully Chalamet’s magnetic screen allure comes to rescue the film from its slippage into a sexist dreck, essentially leavens the character with animation and a residing air of self-deprecating modesty. In short, it is a beautiful, soothing film to look at and listen to, but again, all that glitters is not gold, and A RAINING DAY IN NEW YORK is unequivocally too antiquated for its own good.

referential entries: Allen’s CAFé SOCIETY (2016, 6.6/10); BLUE JASMINE (2013, 6.2/10); MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011, 6.4/10).