you will meet a tall dark stranger

London will never replace Manhattan in Woody Allen’s affections for movie settings, but it has recently served as the backdrop for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Tackling the uncertainties of marriage, aging, jobs, family and children, Allen puts together an uncanny ensemble in which funny bizarre characters are caught in different life crises.

The powerful cast ranges from an aging couple that splits up after forty years of marriage to their daughter’s relationship shaken by strains and stresses, while inevitably, there are some young characters thrown into the mix. The feisty elegant Helena (Gemma Jones) starts seeing a psychic, Cristal, after being abandoned by her husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), who has decided to live again his age of thirty-five with an awkward blonde prostitute decades his junior (Lucy Punch). In parallel, the grown daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) dreams of starting a family and opening her own art gallery but stumbles supporting her self-centered American husband Roy (Josh Brolin), who wastes time trying to finish off a novel with little success. His eye soon wanders to a beautiful guitar player (The Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto) whom he madly falls in love with.

This colourful bizarre concoction moves from comedy to farce and melodrama but most touchingly, Woody Allen shows human follies and weaknesses in a ridiculous but understandable light. He seems to stay in love with his characters in spite of their frequent missteps. And it is not long before the bloom fades from every rose. Allan’s fine ability to show ordinary life situations and be thought-provoking is a marvel to behold.. 

*** watch the trailer