Ball's in Your Court

The tennis ball flies back and forth over the net. Then, in a one-in-a-million shot, it hits the top of the net, and for a brief moment, is suspended in mid-air. It could fall on either side, but which one?

For Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' lead character in Match Point, the ball seems to fall on his opponents' side in the metaphorical tennis game of life most of the time. This is a point that Woody Allen wants us to get, and he repeats it several times in various conversations throughout the movie. While it seems heavy-handed at times, there is no doubting Match Point is a wonderful construction of a screenplay. In fact, that's probably the best thing about it, as you look back and marvel over it like one does over a house of cards.

Because it is a beautiful construction, there aren't any real people in the characters; they are archetypes. Stock characters with a few discernible attributes, but they're there just to serve the screenplay, and so we don't really care. Nevertheless, there are some genuinely sexy and witty exchanges, especially in a delicious scene where Rhys-Meyers flirts with Scarlett Johansson over a ping pong table. Seldom has conversation been so sexy.

It was probably a tad long and could've used some trimming in the middle bits, but everything comes together nicely and fiendishly. Just when someone gets too annoying, a plan is concocted to off that person, and the darkly comic scenes after that are lots of fun. And then just when the ending seems to be a deus ex machina cop-out, another question is raised, and the image of a gold ring hitting a guardrail above a river and falling back begins to make more sense.

If the ball fell back into his court, then he would've lost. Yet he gets away scot-free, so how does that image make sense?

Ah, but then again, looking at what he has, are you sure that he won?

(This is a long-overdue post, and will be followed up with more posts on all the movies I saw this month)