Film américain, britannique (2004).
Comédie dramatique.
Durée : 2h 00 .
Date de sortie : 26 Octobre 2005
Avec Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Rose Keegan, Eddie Marsan
Réalisé par Woody Allen
En Angleterre, un professeur de tennis donne des leçons à différents membres d’une famille aisée. Il découvre ainsi les moeurs de la haute société britannique, et tombe bientôt amoureux de deux jeunes femmes.
(L'avis exprimé par les rédacteurs de cette rubrique est indépendant du travail et des choix du Jury oecuménique.)
13 mai 2005
London has given Woody Allen a new lease of life. He obviously loves London – with more than enough sights of well-known and unknown locations. He also communicates differently through a principally British cast, their different accents, vocabulary and voice inflections. At times, Match Point is more British than British.
We enter the upper class Hewett family with Irish tennis coach, Chris Wilton (a surprisingly effective Jonathan Rhys Myers). While we finds them pompous, he finds them fascinating and soon throws in his lot with them, friendships, opera and the arts, business positions, marriage. Early on we catch him reading Dostoievski, so Allen is giving us the lead for the further plot developments. It is Crime and Punishment and Crimes and Misdemeanours revisited, English-style.
There is an opening light reflection on luck when a tennis ball served balances on the net and could fall either way, win or lose. Allen uses this image with relish in the closing section of the film. In the meantime, Chris has married Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer) and continued an affair with aspiring actress Nola (Scarlett Johansson). Allen highlights the patronising banality of the upper classes and the selfish banality of Chris, leaving the audience to provide its own moral anchor for judgments.
