Cassandra’s Dream | Little White Lies

Cassandra’s Dream

22 May 2008 / Released: 23 May 2008

Two men embracing in a garden.
Two men embracing in a garden.
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Anticipation.

After the straight-to-DVD fate of Scoop it seems unlikely that breath will be bated.

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Enjoyment.

Thoroughly entertaining – but for all the wrong reasons.

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In Retrospect.

Indisputable proof of that old separatist chestnut: ‘Write what you know’.

Woody Allen’s lat­est is thor­ough­ly enter­tain­ing – but for all the wrong reasons.

The scene is Lon­don. Ian (Ewan McGre­gor) is a work­ing-class restau­ra­teur with dreams of big busi­ness. Hav­ing fall­en in love with the plum­mi­est of Eng­lish actress­es, he soon finds him­self strug­gling to finance her taste for the fin­er things in life.

Mean­while, Ter­ry, his broth­er (Col­in Far­rell), is a chron­ic gam­bler, plagued by unspeak­able lev­els of debt. When wealthy Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkin­son) beseech­es the broth­ers to mur­der a dan­ger­ous rival in return for hard cash, their fra­ter­nal bond is for­ev­er changed.

Along­side Match Point, and the lit­tle known Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream could be seen as the third instal­ment in Woody Allen’s Lon­don tril­o­gy. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, like its bed­fel­lows, the film’s flir­ta­tions with the mechan­ics of the Eng­lish class sys­tem, and the pow­er of such to lure the every­day man into the world of crime, ring false notes throughout.

And for a film­mak­er who, in the past, has demon­strat­ed such a keen ear for the fre­net­ic, intel­lec­tu­al anx­i­eties of his own New York milieu, it seems a shame that all we are offered here is a ham­my reper­toire of dropped Ts and elon­gat­ed vowels.

Allen him­self has described Cassandra’s Dream as a win­dow into the trag­ic side of life, yet the moral com­pass of the nar­ra­tive is so sim­plis­tic and untex­tured that what is often achieved by the film is an unin­ten­tion­al sense of irony. Indeed, the last 60 min­utes, in which Far­rell can be found squirm­ing beneath the weight of his guilt, might be bet­ter appre­ci­at­ed as a per­fect­ly judged par­o­dy of a psy­cho­log­i­cal break­down than as the thing itself.

Seen in this light, Cassandra’s Dream will no doubt elic­it some enjoy­able chuck­les, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly ones to which Allen will have giv­en his consent.

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