Deconstructing Melinda

WOODY ALLEN'S LATEST TALE OF LOVE

In the wake of recent Woody Allen movies that seemed slapdash and out of I touch, as if he needed to spend both more time at his keyboard and less, one is not encouraged to read in the production notes for his new film that "it took Allen about a month to put Melinda and Melinda on paper." And maybe if he had taken six weeks this would be another Manhattan\ But Melinda and Melinda turns out to be the best thing Allen has done in years. The premise: two romantic tales, loosely based on the same source material, told in tandem, one version ostensibly tragic, one comic, the point apparently being that the two dramatic modes are merely flip sides of the same coin. Or as one character says of another, "He's despondent, he's desperate, he's suicidal. All the comic elements are in place." Fortunately, Allen's genius for storytelling soon drowns out his fondness for undergraduate epiphanies. Playing the titular centerpiece of both narratives, alternatingly fragile, piercing, and buoyant as required, is an astounding young Australian actress named Radha Mitchell, who is arguably best known for being in Phone Booth, and thus not very well known at all. Allen's predictably excellent cast also includes Amanda Peet and Chloe Sevigny, but the other standout is Will Ferrell. He essays the surrogateWoody part and, unlike others who've taken that on in the past—among them John Cusack and Kenneth Branagh—he doesn't lapse into imitating his director's rhythms; instead he delivers vintage-quality Allen lines with his own peculiar vehemence and white-bread conviction. It's like Fred MacMurray doing a Jackie Mason routine, but much, much better. (Rating: ★★★)

BRUCE HANDY