Woody Allen is here again in the world of traditional jazz, with which he is intimate. And, what's more, the critics seem delighted.
Allen's movies typically receive widely diverse reactions, but this isn't your typical Allen flick. The movie's title, "Sweet and Lowdown," gives a clue, as it honors that marvelous blues tune of the twenties.
Sean Penn stars as Emmet Ray, an almost brilliant jazz guitarist, who suffers from a bassoon-sized ego. Set in the 30's, Allen relates a rambling biographical profile of Ray, incorporating documentary-style comments from real life jazz experts like Nat Hentoff.
Allen's musical knowledge and his feel for period set the film's atmosphere, which one reviewer says is "wrapped in a lush nimbus; it's not so much the glow of nostalgia as it is a gentle reminder . . . that there's no going back."
Ray fancies himself the musician supreme until Django Reinhardt's name comes up. Ray knuckles under at that, as he knows real genius when he hears it. The story unfolds in a series of vignettes bouncing around Ray's life. It is told from more than one point of view in tribute to jazz lore, which is loaded with contradictions.
At one point, in one of his constant road trips, Ray meets Hattie, (Samantha Morton), a mute, simple-minded laundress with whom he falls in love. However, he winds up marrying an eccentric heiress played by Uma Thurman, who is described as "looking more like Dietrich than Dietrich did," as she slips into her first scene in a tuxedo, ala "Morocco." The marriage, though, doesn't pan out, and, well, you have to see it, yourself.
Penn is said to have turned in one of his best performances as the slick Ray, with his glazed pompadour and pencil moustache, and British actress Morton's portrayal of the mute girl has been called "compelling," provoking one hardened reviewer to tears.
Allen has spent enough time exploring his neuroses, with which the whole word must be bored by now. This apparently warm and sensitive film, blessedly, doesn't "go there."
It is rated PG-13 for sexual content and some substance abuse.
It opens Thursday at Market Square East.
