Match point

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Match point
Original title Match point
Country of production United Kingdom
United States
Luxembourg
original language English
Publishing year 2005
length approx. 119 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 12
Rod
Director Woody Allen
script Woody Allen
production Letty Aronson
Lucy Darwin
Gareth Wiley
camera Remi Adefarasin
cut Alisa Lepselter
occupation

Match Point is a melodrama - thriller from 2005 directed by Woody Allen , who also wrote the screenplay. In his 39th directorial work, Allen shot a film exclusively in England for the first time .

action

The film begins with a slow motion shot of a tennis ball hitting the edge of the net and jumping straight up. Then the picture pauses, leaving it unclear in which area the ball will land.

Chris Wilton, who comes from Ireland from a humble background and has given up his career as a professional tennis player, comes to London to work as a tennis instructor in an exclusive club. There he made the acquaintance of the wealthy Tom Hewett, who came from a family of industrialists and is a member of London's celebrities . Like Tom, Chris seems to be interested in opera and soon Chris becomes a welcome guest in the family home. The father Alec Hewett is impressed by Wilton, and his daughter Chloe falls in love with him. The two meet and soon begin a love affair.

At the Hewett's, Chris met Tom's fiancée, the beautiful but unsuccessful American actress Nola Rice. The relationship between Tom and Nola is tolerated by the parents, but the mother repeatedly indulges in malicious allusions to the unprofitable art of acting.

After cautious expressions of interest and through Chloe's mediation, Chris soon gets a job as a manager in Alec Hewett's company. He marries Chloe and moves into a luxurious apartment with her on the south bank of the Thames . However, Chris has a passionate desire for Nola. He chases after her and begins an affair with her some time after the breakup with Tom (who has found a more suitable fiancée). However, the passionate relationship becomes imbalanced when Nola becomes pregnant and appears increasingly demanding.

Meanwhile, Chloe does not become pregnant despite several consultations with specialists. Chloe tries hard to get pregnant and at times even suspects her husband of having an affair, as he is increasingly indifferent, is absent and makes secret phone calls.

Chris, who has been feeling his life as a burden but also as comfortable for some time, is pressed by Nola ever more violently to leave Chloe. Finally, she threatens to put Chloe in the picture herself. Chris then makes the decision to get rid of Nola. He steals a hunting rifle and ammunition from his father-in-law's gun cabinet and uses a pretext to gain access to Nola's neighbor's apartment. There he first shoots the old woman, ransacked her room and randomly pocketed jewelry and medication. Then he waits in the apartment until Nola enters the stairwell at the appointed time and shoots her too. Chris throws the drugs and jewelry into the Thames. The wedding ring ricochets off a railing unnoticed and falls back onto the bank - a visual parallel to the tennis ball shown at the beginning and a reference to the opening monologue about the role of luck.

The investigating police officers initially assume that the perpetrator must have been a drug addict and that Nola was a random victim. However, they also suspect Chris and are interrogating him because Nola has reported about their love affair in her diary. In a dream-like scene, both Nola and the neighbor appear to Chris and accuse him of his actions, including killing his own unborn child. Chris admits that it would be appropriate if he were arrested and punished; it would be a sign of justice or a glimmer of hope for something like meaningfulness in the world. The lead investigator realizes in a nocturnal inspiration that Chris must be the killer and what the murder plan looked like.

Shortly afterwards, the neighbor's wedding ring was found in the possession of a drug addict who had died in a robbery and had a long criminal record. Everything now seems to indicate that he stole the wedding ring from the old woman's apartment and committed the murders. As a result, the case is considered to have been resolved, probably also for the sake of convenience.

In the final scene of the film, Chris is in the family circle. One celebrates the coming home of Chloe and their newborn son from the clinic. The film ends with Chris looking out of the window with an absent expression, without taking part in the conversation of the others.

music

The film does not contain any film music composed especially for him; instead, one hears operatic classics by Gaetano Donizetti ( Una furtiva lagrima ), Giuseppe Verdi (Un dì felice, eterea from La traviata , Gualtier Maldè from Rigoletto , Mal reggendo all'aspro assalto from the Troubadour ), Antônio Carlos Gomes (Mia piccirella) , Gioachino Rossini (Arresta) and Georges Bizet (Mi par d'udir ancora) . Five of the tracks were sung by Enrico Caruso . You can also briefly hear music by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the musical The Woman in White, which appears in the film .

The arias have a connecting function. The film begins and ends with the aria Una furtiva lacrima from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore , in which the singer laments his unfulfilled love. Cloe and Chris get closer for the first time against the backdrop of the love duet from Rigoletto . The long murder scene is accompanied by Otello's outbursts of anger, Jago's manipulative dream tale (Era la notte) and the two oath duets in the second act of Verdi's Otello . When Chris throws the stolen jewelry into the Thames, the aria of Macduff from Verdi's Macbeth (O figli, o figli miei!) , In which the latter laments the murder of his children , can be heard .

background

  • In the course of the murder, there are clear parallels to guilt and atonement , the book that Chris reads towards the beginning of the film. The parallels with the question of morality, guilt and conscience are continued until the end of the film. This fact gives the work "Guilt and Atonement" a key role in the melodrama.
  • With the exception of the American Scarlett Johansson and the Irish Jonathan Rhys Meyers , all of the actors in the film were of British origin. The majority of the film team also came from Great Britain.
  • Originally, Kate Winslet provided for the female lead. But she got out because she became pregnant with her second child.
  • At the beginning of the film you can see Chris Wilton reading the novel Crime and Punishment (German book title: Schuld und Sühne) , as well as the book The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii about its author Fyodor Dostojewski . In addition, the feature film The Motorcycle Diaries (German title: Die Reise des Junge Che ) is mentioned, which the main characters want to see in the cinema. When Chris and Chloe meet for a date in the cinema, a scene from the film Rififi can be heard.
  • It premiered on May 12, 2005 at the Cannes International Film Festival , where the film was shown out of competition. Official theatrical release in Germany was on 29 December 2005, in the UK on 6 January 2006 and in the US on January 20, 2006. In the cinemas of the United States about 3.4 million visitors were counted, in the countries of the European Union were around 7.1 million, of which the German cinemas accounted for 858,783 visitors.
  • Production costs were estimated at around $ 15 million. The film grossed around 85 million US dollars in cinemas worldwide, including around 23 million US dollars in the United States and 6.3 million US dollars in Germany.
  • Filming began on June 12, 2004 and ended in August 2004. With the exception of one location in Berkshire , England , the film was shot on location in London and in London's Ealing Studios .
  • In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro , the director said about the film:

“It's a film about happiness. About the contradictions of ambition and passion. And about impunity. I am not personally a cynic, but it is clear that there is a certain cynicism in society and that one day everyone should worry about injustice, about unpunished - even rewarded - crimes. I had the idea of ​​a story on this subject, and it seemed to me that it found an echo in 19th century literature, particularly with guilt and atonement . "

- Woody Allen

Reviews

  • “Woody Allen literally reinvented himself with a brilliant crime melodrama. While he was previously subscribed to comedies that take place in the New York intellectual milieu, are accompanied by a lot of jazz and always have a jittery man who struggles with life as the protagonist, Allen has not only made the leap into the old world with his new film geographically completed. […] The swing of his New York films has given way to classical opera, which - unlike American jazz - is reserved for better society and ultimately becomes a ticket to the upper class for Chris. It turns out that heavy, irony-free material suits everyone at least as well as comedies. At the end of the film the film comes up with a very surprising insight: Sometimes it's better when a ball doesn't go over the net! ”- Carsten Heidböhmer on stern.de on December 15, 2009.
  • “A didactic piece, an upper-class satire, a collection of clichés, a literature review, a fairy tale. Woody Allen's new film 'Match Point' invites you to identify with evil. […] Well, it was me, unaware, who identified myself with the talented climber Chris and as a result ended up in the devil's kitchen. Woody Allen managed it in a clever and beautiful and fortunate way that I found myself on the completely wrong side when it comes to questions of morality, custom and decency, and with conviction too. All respect, Woody Allen, you made it, you made me. I fevered with the evil ... “- Dietrich Kuhlbrodt in Die Tageszeitung on December 29, 2005.
  • “Of course the film was originally written for Woody's Biotop New York, but then he couldn't find any producers in the USA who wanted to guarantee him the independence he was used to. The distance from the neuroses of New York did the film extremely good. And the relocation to London brought the cool story a few degrees more cooling, made the distinctive keynote of Protestant ethics a little more Protestant. One would also like to attribute the unusual ending - with its mesalliance of cynicism and morality - to the influence of old Europe. ”- Fritz Göttler in Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 28, 2005.
  • “'Match Point' is a sophisticated film about the moral defects of unconditional success and the incompatibility of ambition and love, happiness and justice. […] Allen skillfully changes the narrative tempo, so he takes an infinite amount of time to drive Nola Paul into his arms. But before the plot can expand into melodrama, we are already in the staccato of a police film. [...] Nevertheless, you can feel Allen's ingenuity on every corner, his sophistic somersaults with which he overturns the certainties of bourgeois life and his associative agility with which he repeatedly approaches the primary themes of his oeuvre , above all his almost manic preoccupation with Dostoyevsky's " Guilt and Atonement ". […] It was seldom so bitter and angry with Woody Allen. And in the end, you yourself suspect the luck of being corrupt through and through. ”- Birgit Glombitza on Spiegel Online on December 28, 2005.

Awards

  • Golden Globe Awards 2006 :
    • nominated in the categories
      • Best film - drama
      • Best director
      • Best Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson)
      • Best script
  • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Argentina 2006
    • Best Foreign Film: Woody Allen
  • David di Donatello 2006
    • Best Foreign Film (Miglior Film dell'Unione Europea) Woody Allen
  • Golden Eagle (Russia) 2006
    • Nomination for Best Foreign Film: Woody Allen
  • Nastro d'Argento 2007
    • Nomination for Best Non-European Director (Regista del Miglior Film Non-Europeo) Woody Allen
  • Robert Festival 2007
    • Nominated: Best American Film (Årets amerikanske film) Woody Allen

literature

  • Cornelia Braun: Strange luck? Paradoxes and tilted images in Woody Allen's film Match Point (2005). In: Michael Braun (among others) (Ed.): Komik im Film. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2019, pp. 281–293.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Approval certificate for Match Point . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2005 (PDF; test number: 104 526 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Match Point . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=matchpoint.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0416320/locations
  5. ↑ From the press release of the film distribution company Prokino, page 7 ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.matchpoint-derfilm.de
  6. ↑ http://www.stern.de/kultur/film/match-point-neustart-in-der-alten-welt-552175.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically defective marked. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.stern.de  
  7. ↑ http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/archiv/?dig=2005/12/29/a0153
  8. ↑ Inflamed by compulsion. In: sueddeutsche.de. December 13, 2008, accessed March 22, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Birgit Glombitza: "Match Point": Cynicism makes the game. In: Spiegel Online . December 28, 2005, accessed June 9, 2018 .