Match Point

Might as well get it over with right away and just say it: Match Point is the long awaited Return to Form that Woody Allen buffs have yearned for. It's also a drama, rather than a comedy, and Allen exercises enough self-restraint to keep his trademark lighting-bolt witticisms more or less under control. There are only two instances when Allen can't help himself and lets loose with savage one-liners; otherwise, you might not even know, aside from the occasional telltale clue (a social climber doing his homework by reading Dostoevsky in bed, the subtly grinding conflict growling away at the heart of the picture) that Allen wrote and directed.

For one thing, Allen sets his movie in London. How can it be? You almost gasp with the shock of the transplanting, it's so jarring. Word is that Allen originally wrote the film to take place in New York, which only adds to the sense of displacement. What the hell are we doing across the pond, watching the inevitable dance of seduction and the unraveling of careful plans and regimented lives but listening to posh English voices deliver Allen's dialogue?

The answer arrives soon enough, as Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, playing former pro tennis player Chris Wilton, worms his way into employment at an exclusive fitness club and then, with unerring charm and hunger, enmeshes himself into the fabric of the wealthy Hewett family. In New York, we would praise Wilton for his careful strategy and relentless discipline; we'd compare him the "The Apprentice" and envy his ingenuity as he pals up to Tom (Matthew Goode), the diffident scion of the Hewett business empire, then marries Tom's sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer) and secures himself a well-paying job in the family firm. We'd even regard Wilton's affair with the film's resident American, Nola Rice (Scarlett Johannsen), as his due; after all, the lad had risen from impoverished circumstances, first as a tennis pro and now by marrying well, so surely he deserves his perks and comforts. Indeed, given that Nola herself is a gold-digger and Wilton's spiritual fellow-traveler, we would root for the two of them to escape the gilded cage that Wilton has landed himself in ? a strained marriage made miserable by Chloe's inability to conceive, the elegant but heartless emptiness of all the gleaming material comfort that money can provide ? and set up house together in some blue-collar neighborhood where they could rear a pack of rug-rats and live happily ever after, with tired feet and spotty health coverage.

But in London, with its ever-present class-consciousness, Wilton is a different creature. His hunger and ladder-climbing is not a virtue in the English drawing room; though his charm and humility may conceal it well, all those stiff spines and ever-present tea cups tell us that Wilton is that most English of all monsters: a bounder. As such, we can expect him to disgrace himself and the well-bred family that has foolishly welcomed him into its ranks. And so it happens: as their affair ignites one rainy afternoon in the country, Nola is still dating Tom. She recognizes that Wilton's hot-blooded betrayal of his best friend puts both their plans in jeopardy, but Wilton won't hear her warnings; sure enough, it's not long before Nola and Tom break up, Tom moves on and marries someone else, and a chance encounter reunites the guilty lovebirds in the cavernous surrounds of a museum. Really, it's too obvious, if totally apropos; Wilton is bored shitless with Art and Taste and Opera; Nora's return gives his life a vital, if dangerous spark even if it does throw his well-heeled lifestyle into jeopardy. The rest of the pieces swirl and tumble into place accordingly.

Naturally, while Wilton's dutiful and exasperated attentions don't manage to get his wife pregnant ? yes, life among the upper crust is-so-sterile ? his passionate animal couplings with his American mistress soon have Nora in a family way, and though he offers to pay to have the problem "fixed," Nora will have none of it; true to her American roots, she envisions the two of them in a shabby-but-loving nest. Wilton's solution to this dilemma would be tabloid fodder in the States, but across the pond there's something starched and formal about it. The surprise lies not in how Wilton is dragged from misdemeanor into crime even as he watches his own actions with growing horror; what really grips us is how random chance factors into his meticulously drawn plans ? and how, despite his monstrous deeds, Wilton still has a too-human heart that shatters under the weight of his own fear and guilt.

Temptation, betrayal, mortality, literature, high-end real estate? all the fixings for a Woody Allen comedy come together in a drama that may be boilerplate in its rough outline, but moment by moment unfolds with such lush style and such top-rate performances that you just have to thanks the gods of cinema for giving Allen at least one more gem of a movie.