The Golden Age
By Jonathan Kane
Woody Allen strikes gold in his new, sumptuously beautiful and touching period-piece romantic comedy, “Café Society.” Besides being one of the best films of his later period (this marks the 80-year-old director’s 47th film), it also harkens back to two of his best films, “Radio Days” and “Bullets Over Broadway.”
Set in the 1930s and bouncing back and forth between Hollywood and the Bronx and Manhattan, the film is a love letter to the period and the locales. The film is also supremely aided by Allen’s first collaboration with the genius cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who in turn shoots in digital for the first time. Whether it is the blue pool of a Hollywood mansion or the incredible lighting of Central Park at dawn, the film is a visual delight.
The story follows Jessie Eisenberg, a street-smart kid from the Bronx who travels to Hollywood to find a job with his uncle, the uber-agent Steve Carell. Carell is so disinterested that he puts off their meeting for weeks, but when they finally do meet, he introduces Eisenberg to his beautiful assistant, played by an impressive and luminous Kristen Stewart.
Eisenberg is smitten and eventually woos Stewart, but there is a complication. She is also seeing a married man. Eisenberg moves back to New York and goes to work for his gangster brother – a fine Corey Stoll – at his nightclub, which soon becomes the place to be.
Eisenberg rises in the New York social scene and eventually comes face to face again with Stewart one night at his nightclub. In the scene and throughout the film, Eisenberg does some of his best work to date.
What might have been between the lovers resonates powerfully and deeply. As does this wonderful movie.