You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, 2010
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin


Stage: Home theatre


Tall Dark Stranger in short: Follows a pair of married couples, Alfie (Hopkins) and Helena (Jones), and their daughter Sally (Watts) and husband Roy (Brolin), as their passions, ambitions, and anxieties lead them into trouble and out of their minds. After Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller. Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia (Pinto), a mystery woman who catches his gaze through a nearby window.


Preps: Hmmmm, amazing cast. And Woody Allen. Enough reasons for me to see it. Allen for sure. But don't know anything about it and I feel I don't need to :)



Reality: The title makes an ironic statement that is pursued throughout the movie. Showing the reality as it is, not ironed and stashed into some fancy cover paper or pictured as it is supposed to be.. no, this movie really shows the way things can ironically change. Narrator here plays an excellent role, as always in one of Allen's masterpieces. Was surprised, though, not seeing him side by side with the breathtaking cast. Watts and Brolin have the lead character role, that is played with and over and over torn apart - in every aspect of the relationship you can imagine. Passing through past and present in a way to show the viewer the roses from the start and the vinegar at the end of the relationship.. like maturing the flowers, the nourishment and obtaining all relationships in the movie seems a desperate deed. They all flee to the inevitable end. Consisted because of greed (the relationship between the father and the prostitute), doomed to fail. Abandoning your dreams.. leading to desperation and afterall, the end.
The mother, staying at the friend that nurtures her wildest imagination with future visions, taking money for telling her things she wanted to hear - well, that's pure life - so many people do it and so many more are addicted to this. You can get pretty emotional, watching the piece, as it will drive into your brain cells and stream through your veins. I wonder all the time about the things that happen. Stealing your "supposeably" dead friend's work just to make a breakthrough (and yes, irony again), when you find out he's not dead at all and that at some point you will be exposed to public humiliation because you stole the work (or wanted a better life you thought you deserved) - this story in perticular, goes deeply in the egocentrism of a man. Trying your whole life to make a breakthrough and to make it with someone else's work, because yours isn't good enough - this just makes up for the tragedy really happening here. And trying to get another chance with a man that seeks other human beings for the sake of not being left alone.. well, the tragic moments deepen with each moment of this movie.

A splendid artwork of Woody Allen, indeed. Showing real situations, real things that can happen to each individual. Very humorous and very tragical in the same moment. And a brilliant cast. Not a moment lost watching this movie. A strong recommendation.


My personal rating: 9,0 (again, a superb piece from Allen. Pure reality and irony. In its best and its vividness - not the way we like it, because it strikes you too real. But just because it's really real.



The stranger on IMDB
You will meet a tall dark stranger official sites