Melinda and Melinda (2005) Review

It's been a long time since Woody Allen has had a leading lady as captivating as Radha Mitchell. But she can't quite make up for the imbalance of the film's two stories.

Allen at New York premiere © Dimitrios Kambouris/Wireimage.com

There's no doubt the landmark 1981 independent film My Dinner with Andre is one Woody Allen could have and, in some ways, should have made. Its urbanite Manhattan setting, intellectual ideas and verbose dialogue all screamed The Woodman in his prime rather than Louis Malle in his twilight years.

Now, some twenty-five years later, Woody Allen has finally riffed on that film, starting off Melinda and Melinda with a similar dinner table conversation between original Andre star Wallace Shawn, Al Pepe, the artistic director of David Mamet's Atlantic Theater Company and two others, and then quickly moving on to a pair of evening meals involving the title characters, played in both cases by the wondrously talented Australian-born actress Radha Mitchell.

Much like Dianne Wiest in the full-bodied Hannah and her Sisters and Judy Davis in the elegant Husbands and Wives, Mitchell thoroughly dominates Allen's third treatise on the complexities of urban matrimony. And in the process, she very nearly rescues a film that is the cinematic equivalent of sitting down to dinner with Woody Allen and conversing about life.

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