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'Cafe Society' demonstrates flashes of director Allen

Woody Allen's "Cafe Society" opens with a garish blast of aquamarine: a tropical-hued art deco tableau set at a cocktail party thrown by a Hollywood agent in the 1930s. As stars and suits name-drop over highballs, bathed in the reflected turquoise light of a swimming pool, viewers may well wonder whether they've stepped into the wrong movie.

Blue? In a Woody Allen film? Where are the signature dollops of amber, those scenes that look as if they were carved from a soft pat of unsalted butter?

Oh, they're coming. Indeed, part of the attraction of "Cafe Society" is how Allen collaborates with the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro - a first-time outing for the two, and the first time Allen has agreed to shoot digitally, instead of on film. It's a win-lose proposition.

There are scenes in the film - which takes place in Los Angeles and New York - in which the suntanned characters look as if they've been hewn from the same mahogany-toned paneling of their office walls. But there are moments of transporting beauty as well.

Its visual design aside, "Cafe Society" is upper-middle-late-period Allen, a modestly diverting ditty that will never go down as one of his greats.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Bobby, a young man who arrives in L.A. hoping to break into showbiz by way of his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a big-time agent. When Phil fobs Bobby off on one of his office assistants, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), the two young people strike up a friendship. Then Bobby falls in love and complications ensue, the whole magilla bringing Bobby back to where he came from: Manhattan, where he returns to his overbearing parents and petty-criminal brother, Ben (Corey Stoll).

"Cafe Society" is full of incident but essentially wispy. The film is most enjoyable simply as a collection of sprightly, astute performances, especially Eisenberg's dyspeptically smooth interpretation of a role that echoes Allen's own neurotic persona.

As for Stewart, she's without doubt an alluring screen presence. But she seems too smoky-eyed and wearied by life to play the uncynical Vonnie. Not only are her cadences and gestures anachronistic, but some of her lines feel jarringly out of place as well.

Allen fans will recognize the contours of his taste and the imagined universe he inhabits. It's a universe of caricatures and hyperbole: harping mothers and neurotic sons; soignee WASP's nests; and dollhouse-like enclaves untouched by outside realities, but mired in moral questions about love, character, mortality and fidelity.

With each year, Allen's insular version of the past feels more eccentric. Depending on the viewer, it's either happily reassuring or strangely out of touch. There are moments in "Cafe Society" that unmistakably echo similar ones in Allen's own life, including a joke about Vonnie and how she fits into Bobby's family tree. (A joke involving Errol Flynn is just plain icky.)

Viewers may laugh, wince or do both simultaneously. Just as we can take or leave his particular form of honeyed, hyper-ethnic nostalgia, we're free to read in whatever we please to the ethical problems that torment his characters. It's clear by now that he doesn't care.

It's Allen's world. We can choose to live in it or not, but he, for one, will never change.

“Cafe Society”

★ ★

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll

Directed by: Woody Allen

Other: A Lionsgate release. Rated PG-13 for violence, a drug reference, suggestive material and smoking. 96 minutes

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