Mark Reviews Movies: RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL

Rifkin's Festival, MPI Media Group

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 27, 2022

Woody Allen continues to coast in Rifkin's Festival, a movie so lazy and without purpose that even the cast members can't seem to hide their boredom with the material. The story is, perhaps, what could be summed up as typical Allen: A self-absorbed man goes looking for meaning and, because he is miserable on a foundational level, constantly comes up short. After decades of this, the joke has run thin for us, to be sure, and also, clearly, for Allen, who can't even be bothered to offer up even the façade of a point this time.

Here, Wallace Shawn plays Mort Rifkin, the main character who's more or less a stand-in for the famously open and self-deprecating filmmaker. In better days, the casting would have been a reason for some celebration, but those days have passed. Shawn ends up being a bit too chipper for the role of a man filled with marital jealousy, professional uncertainty, and existential dread, anyway.

Mort is in his therapist's office, preparing to tell the story of his recent trip to the San Sebastian Film Festival with his wife Sue (Gina Gershon). The framing device is pointless, except that it gives Mort an opportunity to narrate the events as they unfold, giving additional voice to his complaints about love, marriage, the state of movies, and how life seems to be meaningless. A return to the office in the final scene, in which Mort hands off the potential message of his story to the unheard psychiatrist, only solidifies how useless the gimmick is—not to mention how little thought Allen put into figuring out a reason to tell this tale.

Upon arriving in Spain, Mort worries that Sue, a publicist who runs her own firm, might have a bit of a crush on up-and-coming filmmaker Philippe (Louis Garrel), who is handsome and genial, capable of showing some humility, and actually pays attention to her. For his part, Mort spends his time whining about how modern movies aren't like the ones he taught in college, bemoaning how he can't write the novel he has wanted to write for decades, and speaking ill of his wife's client and the guy's movie whenever he has the chance.

All the while, he seemingly goes out of his way to avoid what Sue wants to do, essentially giving her plenty of time to be alone with Philippe. Plus, he is equally terrified of the possible meaninglessness of life and the inevitability of death.

Since it's an Allen movie and Mort is something of a stand-in for the filmmaker, the character also develops romantic feelings for a woman who is decades his junior. She's Jo (Elena Anaya), a well-regarded doctor who checks Mort on account of chest pains he has been having.

He's instantly infatuated and starts coming up with excuses to visit Jo again (In one scene, Allen relies on the old gag of a doctor being right there in the house, but he can't even muster the energy to make it work). That Jo, who has a history and a present of being married to a bad man (a temperamental, drunk, and philandering artist now), actually seems semi-interested in Mort, after talking about spots in New York City and having a couple drinks with the guy, is also typical Allen—and, as the years and decades pass, increasingly unconvincing on his part.

The rest of the plot is a sort-of two-way love triangle, in that Mort and Philippe are vying for Sue's affection (Well, the filmmaker is, at least), while Mort has to decide between the wife to whom he has been faithful for decades and the doctor he just met (if we buy that either—and especially the latter—would have any real reason to keep him around or give him a chance). As the story meanders through and circles around Mort's moral and romantic dilemmas, he imagines himself and others in re-creations of some of his favorite classic European films, which gives Allen an opportunity to shallowly ape the likes of Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, and Ingmar Bergman (twice, including one homage with Christoph Waltz playing a Death who's as bored with Mort as we are by then).

Allen hasn't officially retired from making movies yet. Rifkin's Festival suggests he might have unofficially, though.

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