Acorn

Imagine a classy dinner party where a dysfunctional married couple entertain important friends whom they hope will save their careers. Then there is a pounding at the door and a beautiful and passionate woman enters demanding immediate attention to keep her from death. The dinner is ruined. Is this funny? Is this awful? As Melinda and Melinda proves, it all depends on how you write it.

In this experimental Woody Allen film, two playwrights are sit around a caf� discussing whether life is essentially tragic or comedic. Their conclusions are the foundation for their own successes as escapist writers. A mutual friend then proposes a hypothetical situation where a woman stumbles into a group of people's lives and makes them realize and confront their desires. Both writers say describe the way they would write it, and there's the movie. Clever, huh?

The film may question the foundation of life, but ultimately it is about writing. It is fascinating to watch the two stories interweave and play off each other -- how the main plot of one will be a subplot of the other, and how props, songs, settings and costumes will arise in different contexts and be used for different purposes.

Themes like infidelity, murder, intimacy, isolation, alcoholism, suicide, dysfunctional marriages and the nature of love and expectation are explored and expressed from totally different perspectives. The entire situation breeds thoughtful reflection on how a writer determines the tone of a scene, and how a director can make the same dialogue be either very funny or very depressing through lighting, costuming and acting. For non-writers, the film may seem long, convoluted and uneventful, although hopefully it is a little thoughtful.

What it gives is two unlikely extremes. In one part, every encounter and impulse leads to the spiraling downfall for all the characters involved, and in the other, these same encounters lead to a string of happy coincidences and a perfect happy ending for all.

As the film is constantly reminding us, reality does neither. Life is a mixture of happy and sad times, and seldom does everything go either totally right or totally wrong as it does in this film. In a full-length tragedy or romantic-comedy, the portrayal of either extreme would not be surprising or even very noticeable.

Melinda and Melinda, however, purposefully points out how movies exaggerate life either one way or the other, and the audience is made to doubt the film's two strings of events. It makes it very hard for the audience to be emotionally affected by either side of the story.

To the question of whether the foundation of life is either comedic or tragic, the film gives no definitive answer except that there is no definitive answer. "Life is messy," as one character points out, and it is never as predictable or ordered as a cleverly worded movie script.

Comedy and tragedy are simply elements of the interwoven relationships between people and the consequences of intimacy. That the film seeks to understand and explore these concepts is both its strength and its weakness as the philosophy often overwhelms the story.

Because it's Woody Allen, the dialogue and flow is excessively clever -- so clever that it sometimes distracts from the movie. In the tragic half, the clever lines come from deeply thoughtful reflections on the nature of love, dreams and life -- with a predominant lesson that all these end badly. In the comedic half, the cleverness comes from classic Allen witticisms and unlikely similes pointing out the most absurd aspects of society and relationships.

In two casts of characters -- tragic and comedic -- there are only two memorable performances. Radha Mitchell, the complex Melinda, is wonderful and fascinating. She performs with Oscar-screaming subtly and depth.

Will Ferrell as Hobie is also surprisingly good. Ferrell finally proves he can be funny doing witty humor as well as running into things. The rest of the cast is great, and the acting is generally very impressive.

However, the premise of the movie really doesn't give anyone but Mitchell an opportunity for greatness. Allen gifts Melinda with a depth he does not allow any of the other characters to express -- they're there only to help make his point.

Melinda and Melinda is a film consumed by its own premise. The audience feels for Melinda, who is basically the same intelligent and passionate woman in both parts. The auidence is made to care about her happiness in both situations, but neither of the other greater stories is given enough time to cultivate sympathy. The comedic side has a few really funny lines and situations, all pulled off by Ferrell, and the tragic side has a few truly awful moments, all pulled off by Mitchell. Outside those moments, the movie is entertaining only as an interesting hypothetical situation.

Melinda and Melinda is not very exciting or escapist, but it is certainly interesting, worthwhile and ultimately highly recommended.

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