Woody Allen Returns To Spain and a Very Dry Water Well for His 49th Feature

A Woody Allen film in 2022 is, I think, quite a unique experience. Those who believe you can’t separate the art from the artist will find copious proof in his latest movie, “Rifkin’s Festival.” But, of course, they’re unlikely to watch it. Those who still celebrate the artist might watch it, but they won’t find much in the way of art.

His 49^Thfeature film, Allen returns to a well that is not so much dry as desiccated. The movie opens with Wallace Shawn as our Allen doppelgänger, Mort Rifkin. Mort, a former professor who is anxious, is also a committed cinephile, and a self-described intellectual, and he complains vociferously to his analyst for the next hour and a half.

He’s reminiscing about a troubled trip to Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival, which he recently took with his publicist wife, Sue (Gina Gershon). “Film festivals are no longer what they were,”Mort grouses to be a therapist. “I taught cinema as Art: the great European masters. I only went because I couldn’t shake the suspicion she had a little crush on this bulls— movie director she did publicity for.”

We are unable to blame Sue for her wanderlust, even though we flash back in Spain with Mort. Philippe (Louis Garrel), the director. “Little Women”This is a presumptuous fool. Mort, however, is infinitely worse. He never ceases to lament the flaws that he sees all around him. Individuals can be too middlebrow or lowbrow. Society is shallow and fixated on the trivial. Culture is commercialized and completely empty.

Sue engages actively with the outside world, while her husband complains about his health (which he is fine with), his Great American Novel (which remains unwritten) and his belief that the world owes him a masterpiece (the world seems less convinced).

He is shaken by a visit with Dr. Jo Rojas (Elena Anaya). “Wonder Woman”) — who turns out, much to Mort’s 21^stcentury shock, to be a woman. This Allen movie features a beautiful young actress. But wait, there’s more: Jo is so charmed by her grumbling septuagenarian patient that she goes out for drinks with him after his physical, confessing how unhappy she is at home. Her husband (Sergi López, “Pan’s Labyrinth”(She says that she has affairs). “And I accept that. After all, he’s an artist. And you can’t judge an artist by bourgeois standards.”

You can definitely judge him by his artistic works. And Mort’s persistent insistence on flatly dismissing any culture not created by The Great Men of History Past — Buñuel, Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Hawks, Ford, Capra, Welles, Stravinsky, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Stendhal, Proust, and Joyce are all name-checked — grows increasingly tiresome.

Allen does try to inject some whimsy into the argument that art ground to a halt generations ago, through black-and-white fantasies reflecting Mort’s passions. It is odd that such a privileged cinephile dream in only the obvious choices. “Persona,” “The Seventh Seal,” “Citizen Kane.” (A joke about Mort’s neighbor, Rose Budnik, is kind of funny, if also the pinnacle of the movie’s humor.)

Then again, Allen is proof that tastes congeal: He, too, has been referencing Mort’s heroes for decades now. Though these Film 101 sequences offer no new insights — at this point in his movie career, Death surely wishes he could flip the chess board over for a backgammon game — they are, at least, a distraction. The cameos from Steve Guttenberg and Tammy Blanchard, Richard Kind and Christoph Waltz are mildly amusing, and clearly superior to the rest of the strangely stilted supporting performances.

Shawn, who has been working with the director since 1979’s “Manhattan,”He could most likely play an Allen substitute in his sleep. He gives it his all anyway, but Shawn is so hamstrung by the script that he’s unable to make Mort even remotely appealing.

Gershon is a more sympathetic presence, her confident energy a pushback against the screenplay’s retrograde vision of Sue. “When we first met, she was not only a great beauty, she was so impressive!”Mort. “Sarah Lawrence, literature major. She was absolutely brilliant. But very neurotic!”Philippe seduces her while announcing, “I like women who achieve. I find their energy sexy.”

The most enticing character, though, is San Sebastián. As cinematographer Vittorio Storaro follows Mort through its verdant parks, waterfront boardwalk, beautiful architecture and charming markets, the viewer’s mind can’t help wandering alongside Allen’s melancholy hero. Alisa Lepselter, a long-time Allen friend, keeps the film moving quickly and allows us to see the movie as a charming travelogue. Despite all of Mort’s complaints, San Sebastián actually seems like an awfully nice place to spend long days with no obligations. This was a nice bit of promotion that the festival acknowledged by releasing the film back in 2020.

When the flashback ends, we return to the analyst’s office. Mort’s final line is so ostentatiously direct it feels as though it’s being spoken straight from filmmaker to viewer: “So, do you have anything to say to me after everything I’ve told you?” But it’s not the brazen challenge Allen thinks it is, in a movie that tells us nothing we don’t already know.

“Rifkin’s Festival”Friday release in U.S. theaters, and on-demand.