Woody deconstructing Woody

MELINDA AND MELINDA (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A great Woody Allen flick is a reminder of the cinematic glory he was (and still is). A good Woody Allen flick is better than the average comedy (and, sometimes, the average drama). Then there are the three or four bad films he made in the last forty years ("Anything Else" is clearly his worst). "Melinda and Melinda" is almost top-notch Woody Allen, a highly incisive and challenging work by the Woodsman - his best film since "Deconstructing Harry." The concept behind "Melinda and Melinda" is less about the contrast between tragedy and comedy than it is about Woody Allen himself - sort of a postmodernist spin on the creative process and who else could do it besides Woody?

The film begins between four people at a restaurant. They converse on a rumored story about a suicidal, depressed woman who moves in with her friends after crashing a dinner party. The idea is simple: can it work best as a drama or as a comedy, or both? We see both versions of this tale, told not as two separate stories but as part of a whole. Melinda (Radha Mitchell) is the woman in both versions. We start with the dramatic version where she moves in with her high-school friend, shopaholic Laurel (Chloe Sevigny) and her husband (Jonny Lee Miller), an aspiring actor. Melinda has just endured an angry divorce trial, separated from her kids. She is hesitant to start a new relationship, but there is a classy pianist and composer (Chiwetel Ejiofor from "Dirty Pretty Things") whom she feels comfortable with.

The comedic version has Melinda already living in an apartment shared by neighbors, such as highly charged independent film director (Amanda Peet) and her sexually frustrated husband (Will Ferrell), the other version of the aspiring, unemployed actor. Melinda still suffers from depression but it is treated with comic innuendoes, and there is the other classy pianist (played by an actor who is nowhere near as classy and sophisticated as Ejofor). And if you have Ferrell (hilariously delivering dialogue that Woody would've if he had cast himself) and Steve Carell appearing, you know you are in for a few laughs.

What's wonderfully illuminating about "Melinda and Melinda" is its juxtaposition of these two versions. Scenes play out one way delivering an outcome, and then the very same scene is delivered in a different context with another outcome, sometimes unexpectedly. The dramatic scenes carry strong, unbridled tension, well handled by Mitchell in some delicious long takes with little or no coverage that Woody is best known for. The comedic version plays like one would expect from Woody, including a visit to the Hamptons where a rich dentist resides that plays like a scene from "Mighty Aphrodite." I waited with breathless anticipation for Ferrell to say he hates snorkeling, and I got a different reading of a similar line where Ferrell exclaims, " I hate beaches. The sand, the water." Yes, Woody, we know you hate the outdoors.

The cast is uniformly perfect, including the star-making performance of Radha Mitchell ("High Art"). It is a performance (or performances) of stunning power - one interpretation of Melinda is clearly poetic while the other is pure silliness done with some comic bravado. Kudos must also go to Will Ferrell who does a fine job of handling Woody's one-liners. Also nice to see Chloe Sevigny in a small but pivotal role as Laurel, the naive, caring friend, a brief but torrentially funny Vinessa Shaw as Ferrell's date, Larry Pine and Wallace Shawn as competing playwrights (both also appeared in "Vanya on 42nd St."), and the watchable Chiwetel Ejiofor. Jonny Lee Miller I can live without. By the way, there is also Brooke Smith as one of Laurel's friends who also appeared in "Vanya on 42nd St." Somebody give this woman a leading role.

Strangely I think some critics missed the boat on this one (the studio did as well by giving it limited distribution). "Melinda and Melinda" is about as personal a statement on the difficulty of writing a comedy and a drama as any filmmaker has ever accomplished on the silver screen. Woody has done some postmodernist deconstruction on his work, essentially saying that he annually does a comedy or a drama - which do you prefer? And you know Woody fans want more comedy, and some of us love his Bergmanesque tales of woe. This time, he has it both ways and he accomplishes something he has rarely done since "Deconstructing Harry" - he is self-critical of himself as a writer and not his fans, as was the case with "Stardust Memories." To some, it may be a masturbatory and self-congratulatory Woody effort. To others, this is essentially Woody Deconstructing Woody.