Film Review - A Rainy Day In New York (2018)

Much has already been made about A Rainy Day in New York. Set for release back in 2018 after Woody Allen signed a multi-picture deal with Amazon Studios, the controversies surrounding his private life and his history became louder and louder under the microscope of the Me Too and Times Up movements. It’s hard, truly, to separate the two but the film has finally made it to the screens (albeit small ones in the UK) after a successful box office run in Europe, post-lockdowns. So, for better or worse, his latest effort is here but as with some of his previous outings, the magic is still lost in the moonlight.

Timothee Chalamet plays Gatsby Welles (yep, you heard right), son of a wealthy New York family and an upstanding student at Yardley College where, between classes and avoiding his parents’ gala dinners, he enjoys galavanting on online poker and card game sites, recently scoring $20,000 on a lucky streak. His girlfriend Ashleigh (Elle Fanning) is also from wealth but dreams of being a writer and has just landed the biggest interview of her fledgling career: speaking to filmmaker Roland Pollard (Liev Schriber) about his new film.

The two head to New York – with a hotel overlooking Central Park in all its glory, as you do – so they can soak (ahem) up the sights and sounds while Ashleigh does her interview. But a romantic weekend away soon heads south as they get pulled away from each other in a series of coincidences, relationship squabbles and lots and lots of rain.

If, like many, you are always excited by Allen’s allure as a filmmaker, then A Rainy Day in New York may suitably scratch that itch that has been bugging you for a couple of years, even if the controversy surrounding it has left it tainted. Suitably pithy and biting, it has all of the hallmarks of his classics from a bygone era but as with Wonder Wheel most recently, it feels more the equivalent of a greatest hits montage than something new and exciting, straining to bring the same energy and verve. Indeed, switching focus to a younger batch of actors doesn’t help his cause as his handle on youth culture and prose really sticks out like a sore thumb, unable to capture the same rhythms that we are used to.

Despite that, though, his cast manages to keep things ticking over just enough to endure any hardships the film presents. Chalamet has been oodles better than his performance here but his good is better than most and manages to penetrate through the smarmy, uptight facade of Gatsby just enough. While Fanning and Gomez both demonstrate their maturity with the film’s most memorable turns, with Jude Law, Diego Luna, Schrieber et al being woefully undeserved.