Film Review Whatever Works

USA 2010. Cert: 12A. 92 mins. Dir: Woody Allen. Cast: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood

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Film Review: Whatever Works

It was a marriage made in comedy heaven; Woody Allen choosing Larry David to be his new leading man. Though Whatever Works is a romantic comedy, we do not see Allen trying to turn David into an uncharacteristically simpering fool. Rather, this is a filmic meeting of minds in which the philosophical romance of Woody Allen is pitted against the infamous misanthropy of Larry David.

Right from the start, we are informed of David’s character Boris’s outlook on the world; that our whole existence is pointless, and we should do ‘whatever works’ to get by in our race to the grave. “This is not the feel-good movie of the year. So if you’re one of those idiots who needs to feel good, go get yourself a foot massage”. The way David pulls off these quotes, and his signature reluctance to be affable, is what make us warm to his characters all the more. Boris is an even more outspoken version of the Larry David we see in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, with even less compassion and a lot more bitterness.

Boris tells us that he isn’t a likeable guy, yet he is actually familiarly loveable in his undaunted determination to tell everyone exactly what he thinks of them. Boris clearly addresses everyone as though they are way beneath him (he constantly reminds all and sundry that he almost won a Nobel Prize in Physics), especially those who do not endorse his ideologies, and they react with the contempt you would expect. Rather than alienating audiences in the same way though, his attitude just makes us more drawn to him as he still makes us laugh out loud, and we see that he is probably hiding a wealth of buried insecurities and maybe even just wants to be loved.

This is where Melody comes into the picture. Played brilliantly by Evan Rachel Wood, the young runaway from Mississippi comes crashing into Boris’s life when he finds her sleeping rough on his doorstep. Trashy, dim-witted and bubbly, she is everything he detests and the total antithesis to himself. Yet we see a ray of hope for Boris’s humanity when he allows Melody to stay for the night to get off the streets and, lo and behold, a reluctant relationship begins to grow.

So when Melody’s mother Marietta tracks her down and sets out trying to coerce her now-married daughter into a life better fated for her, we feel for Boris as he unwittingly starts to become the vulnerable one. His clearly confused young wife secretly starts to question who she should be with-Boris, or the handsome, charming English actor her mother has scouted out and who loves her for who she really is. Simultaneously, Marietta discovers that her previous safe, domestic existence and tacky persona were wrong for her and embarks on a new bourgeois-hippy lifestyle as a successful photographer who lives with two male lovers. In the meantime Boris acknowledges heartbreak for the first time after being dumped, and then consequently finds love again with a woman more suitable for him.

By the end of the film, we have witnessed the significant journeys of three characters-Boris, Melody and Marietta-as they are inadvertently influenced by those around them and subsequently become quite different people to those we are introduced to. Boris and Marietta reach their epiphanies quite involuntarily, and are unwillingly forced into realising that their original perspectives could not really make them happy. Melody, however, regains her original sunny outlook after trying out Boris’s more cynical view of the world, though she does become more mature and self-assured in doing so.

As the equilibrium is restored, we see the hallmark of Woody’s films in a more idealistic message than that conveyed by Boris. Namely, that scepticism and intelligence may prevent us from being set up for a fall by an unrealistic view of life, but love is unthinking and no matter how jaded you are, everyone loves a happy ending.

Posted on Wednesday 21st July 2010
Rebecca Ryder

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