Artist Showdown

Movie Set :: Art as a center piece | Part 2

By Tim Lopreste

Another movie with a stunning set is Match Point. Luxury interior design and Artpieces from the beginning to the end makes this Woody Allen movie a must see for art lovers. Besides the suspenseful Hitchcock like plot, I also loved that the Tate Modern, and the Saatchi Gallery were both important settings of the movie.

The setup of the plot is familiar, almost old-fashioned, so it’s entirely appropriate that the style of the movie fall right in line. Much like Altman’s Gosford Park was a throwback to an earlier age of whodunit film, so Match Point recalls the simple, character-driven elegance of fifties noir. Sometimes familiarity breeds disinterest, but here it feels — mostly — like a welcome presence. It’s the enduring quality of a story told well.

That story is something of an extension of pretty much everything Allen has done. He’s a dab hand with the fish-out-of-water scenario, but here he takes it a bit further; the fish has climbed out of the water and is beginning to evolve legs and lungs, and finding that he rather likes a life with gravity. Chris’ ambition is shielded in a remarkably comfortable skin, despite the social disparity between his youth and his manhood. When his ambitions begin to crystallize in marriage, employment, and luxurious living, his mild obsession needs a new direction, and finds it in Nola, the fish wearing stilts to pretend it has legs.