by Nathaniel R
Chalamet & Fanning and Woody on the set of the ill-fated "A Rainy Day in New York"
For as long as we've been conscious of the movies, there's been a Woody Allen movie released every single year. That clockwork regularity ended with Wonder Wheel (2017). Amazon refused to release the completed picture A Rainy Day in New York which was meant for 2018 when the bad press kept mounting and some of that film's cast (Rebecca Hall and Timothée Chalamet, among them) disowned the film due to media pressure from the Farrow family's accusations against the director (unchanged since 1992 -- Woody was never officially charged after two separate investigations -- but revived very publicly/frequently since early 2014). The filmmaker and Amazon Studios are, last we heard, still in a pricey legal battle over their broken contract (even if you dislike Woody, one wonders what argument Amazon Studios could possibly come up with that's a winning one since they went into that contract with full knowledge of the accusations) but Woody has the greenlight from other sources for his 2020 picture, as yet untitled, which will begin filming in July...
The movie will use the San Sebastian Film Festival as its story backdrop and the plot involves an American husband and wife having separate affairs with a Spanish woman and a French film director while they fall in love with the fantasy of the movies all over again. So, a very Woody Allen plot... romantic affairs + movie magic. Given what's been going on with the press and American actors who worked with Woody Allen in the past, most of the cast are newbies to his filmography... though to be honest Woody had been drifting away from his old habit of reusing the same actors over and over again for quite some time anyway.
The new film will star Christoph Waltz and Gina Gershon (who we assume are playing the American couple though we might be wrong?), Spain's Elena Anaya (Wonder Woman, The Skin I Live In) who we assume is playing the Spanish woman the husband hooks up with), and longtime friend of Woody, Wallace Shawn (this will be his sixth Woody Allen picture). This has been an interesting trend in Woody's movies, for some time now, of drifting away from NYC as the mandatory setting.
Spain's Sergí Lopez (Pan's Labyrinth) and France's most ubiquitous male star Louis Garrel will also appear so we assume one of them is playing the French movie director who the wife takes up with since both of those actors star in French movies, Garrel more frequently of course since he's actually a Frenchmen. Good cast but, as is with any movie, it all depends on execution on all fronts. We used to wonder if Woody's one a year work habit was damaging his work (given the depreciating returns since the mid 90s) but perhaps in this time away he's been taking more time than usual with the writing?