Café Society

For the elderly, white-haired couple sitting next to me in the theater, watching Café Society must have felt like breathing the aroma of yesterday’s roses. Woody Allen’s 47th movie, set in 1930s Los Angeles and Manhattan, drew out thrilled noises from this couple with its stream of celebrity name-dropping: Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Ginger Rogers—all once-recognizable names the younger generation now has to google. It seems Allen was feeling nostalgic when he wrote the script, though his notorious distaste for Hollywood culture still shows.

Protagonist Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) captures Allen’s ambivalence toward Tinseltown: Bobby is an awkward, “deer-in-the-headlights-quality” Jewish native of the Bronx who moves to Los Angeles, where his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a powerhouse agent, ushers him into the glitz of power brunches and private-mansion screenings. Even as Bobby privately snarks about the boozing and schmoozing in Hollywood, calling it a “boring, nasty, dog-eat-dog industry,” he’s seeking something to which he can attach his passions. He finds it in Uncle Phil’s secretary and secret mistress Vonnie (Kristen Stewart).

Dramatic irony builds when Phil confesses to his nephew that he’s going to leave his wife of 25 years and marry his 25-year-old lover. The ignorant Bobby supports him until he realizes the mysterious woman is Vonnie. Bobby returns to New York; runs a nightclub for the rich, famous, and depraved; marries a posh divorcée (Blake Lively); and seems content—until Vonnie and Phil enter arm in arm back into his life.

Café Society sticks to familiar themes: crushed dreams, love triangle, unsatisfied yearnings. (The PG-13 film contains suggestive material and some violence.) Bobby and Vonnie pretend to seek friendship even as they consciously create scenarios for temptation, such as when they stand on a Central Park bridge, watching the sun rise with wine glasses in hand. Eschewing moral commentary, the story simply brings an ache for lost things.