A Rainy Day in New York ***½ (2019, Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Liev Schreiber, Jude Law, Diego Luna) – Movie Review

Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning in A Rainy Day in New York (2019).

Woody Allen’s 48th film A Rainy Day in New York is lightweight, lighthearted, likeable and thoroughly amusing and quite charming. It is very sweetly acted by its three young principals – Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning and Selena Gomez.

It treads no new ground – it’s a Woody Allen New York romantic comedy! – but probably it doesn’t need to. The situations and characters are familiar, but they are given a fairly fresh spin, with lots of fairly fresh jokes, and a typical Woody Allen wicked sense of fun.

Chalamet plays sassy Yardley College posh kid Gatsby Welles plans a romantic weekend with his nice but naively dizzy girlfriend Ashleigh Enright (Fanning), who is off Manhattan to interview the self-doubting, tormented cult film director Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber) for the college paper.

Elle Fanning in A Rainy Day in New York (2019).

Ashleigh meets Pollard and he invites her to a screening of his new film with his troubled writer Ted Davidoff (Jude Law), and then gets bedazzled by a film star (Diego Luna), while Gatsby stumbles on the street location set of a friend’s student film and ends up in a kissing scene in a car with Chan Tyrell (Selena Gomez), a former girlfriend’s cynical younger sister. Cherry Jones stands out as Gatsby’s Mother, making the most of a well-sketched minor role. Rebecca Hall has a nothing role as Connie.

The storyline runs through some idiosyncratic situations and places, touching on themes of betrayal, regret and lost love, and ends up in a very familiar place. It has a neat and comfortable ending – a kinda happy one, so that’s nice.

It is beautifully shot by triple-Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who previously lensed Wonder Wheel for Allen. It is great to have such a lovely looking art work of a movie. There is a lot of movie rain, looking good, so that’s nice too.

And there is a lot of snappy wit, one liners and laughs, as well as a lovely soundtrack of old songs. The old times are back, so that’s nice three.

Thanks to Signature Entertainment, the UK-based home release distributor, the film is finally getting a digital release in global territories, and is released in the UK on 5 June 2020.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Movie Review

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