Just as Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger makes its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, its poster hits the web. This one is as simple as they come seemingly needing only a typewriter and Sharpie marker to create. The artwork clearly won’t grab anyone’s attention, but in a marketing world packed with floating heads, garish fonts and Photoshopped faces, the image’s simplicity is appreciated.
The film focuses on a pair of married couples, Alfie and Helena (Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Jones) and Sally and Roy (Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin). Alfie leaves Helena in exchange for an opportunity to find the youth that passed him by while Helena confides in a fortuneteller. Meanwhile, their daughter Sally starts to crush on her boss (Antonio Banderas) while her husband is smitten by the young Dia (Freida Pinto).
The early reviews I’ve come across have been mediocre. Cinematical says it’s “not amongst Allen’s weakest work, but it’s still far from his strongest” while Indie Wire points out the underdeveloped script. They say the film is “more a diagram for a movie than a work that feels fully realized or inhabited by real people.” I doubt those will be featured on promotional material when the film is released in September.
By Perri Nemiroff (via IMP Awards)
