Melinda And Melinda

In one of Woody Allen’s short stories he stumbles upon a literary time-machine which allows him to conduct a torrid affair with Emma Bovary. No surprises there. In person or by proxy, Mr. Allen’s been using his movies for precisely the same purpose for decades and Melinda And Melinda provides two Madame B’s – both essayed to passable effect by Radha Mitchell – for the price of one.
 This diptych plays out the same narrative – a demi-deranged dame (Mitchell) shows up unexpectedly at a dinner party having taken an overdose and wreaks havoc with the lives of her hosts – as a comedy and a tragedy. As ever, it’s a pleasure to see Woody getting frisky with form, and Melinda is undoubtedly his most playful work since the criminally underrated Everyone Says I Love You (yes, I know I’m the only person who thinks so) or perhaps even Deconstructing Harry.
 That said, Melinda is somehow less than the sum of its parts and doesn’t quite hold up under scrutiny. The tragic strand, which sees Mitchell’s doubly titular heroine find love (with Chiwitel Ejiofor), lose out to Chloe Sevigny (no shame in that) and go mad, plays like blanched Hallmark melodrama. The comic strand, though undeniably slight, is much better, and provides the compellingly odd spectacle of Will Ferrell as Woody ersatz. The actor’s pachydermal physicality put in the service of dweeby neuroticism generates plenty of Elf-en paradoxical comic effect, and he doesn’t so much steal the movie as club it on the head and drag it back to his cave.
 Happily, though not quite A Great Return To Form movie, there’s other stuff to like – the pitch for The Castration Sonata, the feminist movie within the movie, is divinely appalling and you can’t possibly complain about Stravinsky or Duke Ellington.
 Now if only Woody could find a cinematic-time machine to transport his movies away from the Manhattan mores of the seventies.

Running Time 99mins. Cert 12a. Opens March 25th.